WASHINGTON – Today on the floor, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) discussed the inadequate border security funding in President Biden’s budget for the next fiscal year and called out the administration’s misplaced priorities. Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.

“Last week… President Biden released his budget for the next fiscal year, which gave us an unvarnished view of what he truly values, and in countless ways, it stands in stark contrast to what he’s told the American people.”

“Despite saying he cares about the border, President Biden has made it absolutely clear he isn’t serious about addressing the crisis at our southern border.”

“While the President’s request for $535 million may sound like a lot of money – and it is a lot of money – but when you compare it to other line-items in his budget, it starts to look a whole lot smaller.”

“The White House wants to spend even more money on the Department of Homeland Security’s ‘Climate Resilience Program.’ Climate resilience – a whopping $4 billion they want for that. That’s more than seven times higher than what the President proposed for border security technology.”

“We need more boots on the ground. We desperately need more Border Patrol agents on the front lines. The administration wants to hire an additional 350 Border Patrol agents, which would be a great start, but the White House isn’t taking any action to address underlying barriers to hiring those agents.”

“It wouldn’t matter if the White House called for 10,000 new Border Patrol agents in its budget. The agency wouldn’t be able to fill the spots until the administration fixes the broken application process, and we have seen no independent indication of their plans to do so.”

“These additions are desperately needed, but that’s only one piece of the solution. A huge part of the solution lies in deterrence.”

“If people with frivolous asylum claims see they’ll be quickly removed from the United States, they aren’t likely to attempt the journey to our border in the first place.”

“The White House has proposed adding more personnel to process migrants and then release them, but it doesn’t want to hire more people who will actually remove people who break our laws. Based on his own assessment strategy, President Biden does not value border security because his budget certainly does not reflect it.”

“His budget is not a serious proposal to gain operational control of the border. It’s more talk with no action.”