Republicans want to spend $1 billion in taxpayer money on Trump’s $400 million ballroom
It took greater than two months, however Congress ended the shutdown on the Department of Homeland Security final week, approving the identical plan Democrats proposed in February. The closing deal funded the whole thing of DHS, besides Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which Democrats insist on reforming.
For the minority occasion, it was a victory of types — almost the entire congressional Democrats stood agency, and GOP leaders finally accepted what Democratic leaders put on the desk months earlier — however Republicans took the deal figuring out that they deliberate to handle ICE and CBP funding in a separate package deal, which they’d advance via the price range reconciliation course of, which might circumvent the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
It was towards this backdrop that GOP representatives unveiled the main points of their reconciliation invoice, which included an sudden factor. NBC News reported:
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, [on Monday night] launched his committee’s a part of the long-term Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol funding invoice, which incorporates $1 billion for safety features associated to the White House ballroom.
The funding couldn’t be used for non-security components, in accordance to the legislative textual content.
To be certain, the proposal is not simply concerning the ballroom. On the opposite, Republicans are pushing a $72 billion reconciliation package that features, amongst different issues, greater than $38 billion for ICE, roughly $26 billion for CBP and an extra $5 billion for DHS.
To the shock of nobody, the invoice additionally ignores the reform measures Democrats started pushing after the taking pictures deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.
