Senate to take up border funding
The Senate Appropriations Committee will take up a long-stalled border funding request next week aimed at addressing the influx of migrants from Central America.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the spending committee will begin moving the legislation imminently after it was dropped from a disaster aid package.
“The game plan is that we're gonna to take the $4.5 billion that was in the disaster package that was unfortunately taken out, and mark it up next week as a standalone proposition to get money flowing to the border to deal with the housing conditions and take some stress not only off of the agents but the migrants,” Graham said at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday. “I think it'll be money well spent.”
Immigration policy has bedeviled Congress for years, especially under President Donald Trump. But both parties seem to see a need to address the increase in immigration that’s overwhelming the Trump administration, though it appears Senate Republicans aren’t waiting on the House Democratic majority.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Tuesday that he hopes to keep the bill clear of riders that could sink it and predicted that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would bring it to the floor after lawmakers return from the Fourth of July recess. It will need the support of at least seven Democrats to advance in the Senate.
“There is only one way to fix this,” McConnell (R-Ky.) said. “Bipartisan legislation with supplemental border funding is what we need to do.”
Marianne LeVine contributed to this story.
