Democrats Demand $870M for Middle East 'Border Security,' Nothing for US Border Wall
Pair of plans seek to send millions in taxpayer money to secure borders in the Middle East
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Democrats are demanding $870 million from the taxpayer pot to pay for "border security" in countries in the Middle East, according to reports.
However, the pair of plans being pushed to fund the protection of sovereignty for foreign countries offer nothing to secure America's borders, despite the ongoing migrant crisis.
Democrats in Washington unveiled their spending plans on Tuesday.
They made it crystal clear they have no intention of directly addressing the immigration crisis that continues to spiral out of control at the U.S.-Mexico border.
While refusing to fund the completion of the border wall started under President Donald Trump, Democrats are instead suggesting doling out money to address border security concerns elsewhere in the world.
On Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee released a Department of Defense funding bill that earmarks $870 million in taxpayer money to enhance border security for Middle Eastern countries.
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Here's what sections 8148 and 8149 of the bill state (emphases added):
SEC. 8148. Of the amounts appropriated in this Act under the heading ''Operation and Maintenance, Defense-Wide'', for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, $370,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2023, shall be available to reimburse Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman under section 1226 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 (22 U.S.C. 2151 note), for enhanced border security, of which not less than $150,000,000 shall be for Jordan ...
... SEC. 8149. Up to $500,000,000 of funds appropriated by this Act for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency in ''Operation and Maintenance, Defense-Wide'' may be used to provide assistance to the Government of Jordan to support the armed forces of Jordan and to enhance security along its borders.
Yet while rubber-stamping nearly a billion dollars for "enhanced border security" in foreign countries, Democrats in Washington evidently don't feel it is necessary to invest in border wall construction at the U.S. southern border, even as unprecedented numbers of migrants continue to flood into the country with little resistance.
In a Department of Homeland Security budget plan also released Tuesday, House Democratic lawmakers called for stripping more than $2 billion in border wall construction money that had already been appropriated, reducing federal border wall funding to zero.
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Major gaps in the effective border wall leave large areas of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico wide open to illegal border crossers.
The porous border is resulting in a constant strain on those communities as well as Border Patrol agents.
However, the spending plan does "make responsible investments in border security," according to a summary brief of the budget.
Those investments include earmarking millions for "migrant processing improvements" and "migrant child caregivers" and billions for "Civil Immigration Enforcement Operations" in addition to enhancing border technology.
The budget plan also "authorizes the use of up to $100 million from prior border barrier construction appropriations for mitigation activities, including land acquisition, and authorizes the transfer of such funds to the Department of the Interior."
Current projections predict that about 1.2 million border crossers will be encountered at the border by the end of the year and hundreds of thousands more will successfully cross the border, undetected.
