Ted Cruz

At that point, we'd had a shutdown of DHS for a couple of weeks.

We'd had TSA agents who hadn't been paid.

Coast Guardsmen who hadn't been paid, Secret Service officers who hadn't been paid, FEMA officials who hadn't been paid, over 200,000 federal workers at DHS who were not being paid.

And what I told my Republican colleagues is I said, I think if it's up to the Democrats, they'll leave everything shut down forever.

They'll literally, for the rest of the year, they'll be fine never opening the Department of Homeland Security.

Now, start with a basic point.

Well, number one, we have had four major terrorist attacks in the last three weeks, all four by radical Islamic terrorists.

The Department of Homeland Security exists to prevent terror attacks.

There's obviously military conflict in the Middle East.

The terror threat is heightened.

And yet every Democrat but one, every Democrat but John Fetterman,

has voted now eight times to defund the entire Department of Homeland Security, the purpose of the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS was created in the wake of 9-11.

to prepare for and prevent terror attacks.

And I think the Democrats would have left it shut the entire year.

They don't care.

It was the most reckless, irresponsible action we've ever seen.

You look at what was happening at the airports.

The chaos at the airports was out of control.

And here's what I told my colleagues.