RHETORIC vs. REALITY: Bush On Border Security Funding
Fox News is
reporting that in his national address tonight, President Bush will "call on Congress to provide the funding" to secure America’s borders. Bush is going to brag that he has supposedly "increased funding for border security by 66 percent." Wow, that sounds really good. Sounds like the White House and the Republican Party has been behind better funding border security for a while now, right? Sounds like it must be Democrats who have been stopping that, right? Wrong.
A little look at the history shows that exactly the opposite is true: Bush has opposed devoting serious funding to border security, with increases only coming over the White House’s objections. As Rep. Dave Obey (D-WI) noted in an earlier
press release documenting the White House’s opposition to border security funding, “We have had to drag this Administration kicking and screaming to get additional funding for border security.” Most of the time, in fact, the White House and GOP has openly opposed securing America’s borders.
For instance, check out this
fact sheet from the House Appropriations Committee noting how congressional Republicans repeatedly voted down amendments to add critical funding for border security.
Or, how about this little-noticed
San Francisco Chronicle story from 2005:
“The law signed by President Bush less than two months ago to add thousands of border patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border has crashed into the reality of Bush’s austere federal budget proposal, officials said Tuesday. Officially approved by Bush on Dec. 17 after extensive bickering in Congress, the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006. Roughly 80 percent of the agents were to patrol the southern U.S. border from Texas to California, along which thousands of people cross into the United States illegally every year. But Bush’s proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents.”
Snip...
And remember - it was President Bush who
threatened to veto an entire transportation spending bill because it proposed tightening border security regulations and inspections on Mexican trucks entering the United States.
So President Bush can flap his lips all he wants tonight about supposedly wanting to increase funding for border security. But presidential hot air is no match for well-documented facts showing that this White House has worked tirelessly to oppose efforts to secure America’s borders.
http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/05/15/rhetoric-vs-reality-bush-on-border-security-funding/
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