Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords said she is outraged at her Senate colleagues for killing $700 million in emergency border security funds from a war-funding appropriations bill.
On Thursday night, the Senate voted against some $20 billion in domestic spending that was tacked onto a $59 billion war-funding request. The additional projects included stepped-up border security efforts, as well as money for teachers, summer jobs and student loans.
In large part, Republicans said the funding was an end-run around the "pay-go" or pay-as-you-go law that requires new discretionary spending to be offset with either cuts or revenue increases.
Giffords, who has an ad running touting her efforts on border security, is poised to receive a service award this morning from the Arizona Cattlemen's Association for her work on border issues. She said stripping out the funding calls into question how effective the National Guard can be when it takes its place on the border next month.
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President Obama decided in May to put 1,200 soldiers - 524 of them in Arizona - along the southern border.
"Southern Arizonans should be appalled that the United States Senate said 'no' to supporting the troops on the border, said 'no' to protecting the ranchers in my district who are threatened daily and said 'no' to increasing border patrol agents who would help stop the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants into our country," Giffords said in a written statement.
Chalking the vote up to Washington gridlock, Giffords said the troops were intended to serve only as a bridge until more border staff workers arrived.
"This long-overdue deployment was not to take place in a vacuum, and the success of their mission now is in doubt," she said.
The money stripped from the bill included $208 million for 1,200 additional Border Patrol agents, $136 million for additional officers and canine teams at ports of entry, as well as money for additional courts and detention costs.
The House version of the supplemental appropriations bill passed earlier this month with 239 votes in support. Fifteen Democrats and 167 of 177 Republicans voted against the measure.
Giffords sought the funding, she said, because of increased violence in Mexico and because the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector apprehends nearly half of the illegal immigrants detained nationally.
Lt. Valentine Castillo, a spokesman for the Arizona National Guard, said he could not comment on Giffords' concerns.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said on the "On the Record With Greta VanSusteren" show on Fox News Thursday night that there are several keys to securing the border, including the Guard troops, additional surveillance equipment and an adequate supply of Border Patrol workers.
"I mean, there is no substitute for the law enforcement officials," the Arizona senator said.
Kyl's staff did not return calls seeking comment about the vote.
In a floor statement, Sen. John McCain,R-Ariz., said he could not support the funding bill because it was not paid for and the price tag was too high.
He said that could have been remedied with a host of cuts, including a one-year moratorium on raises and bonuses for federal employees, reducing printing costs of government documents, eliminating nonessential government travel and cutting the budgets of members of Congress.
"We've saddled future generations with literally trillions of dollars of debt," McCain said.
"When is it going to end?" he asked. "If we are going to dig ourselves out of this fiscal mess then we must begin to make some very tough and often politically unpopular decisions."
Conceding some funding requests such as border security could be necessary, McCain said they should not have been added to a bill meant to provide support for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He also said the House border fixes weren't as generous as the president's package, and they reduced funding for construction and maintenance of the border fence.
Asked to respond to McCain's concerns that the spending was a way around the "pay-go" provisions, Giffords' spokesman C.J. Karamargin said, "The congresswoman has said all along that border security has to be a top priority. Period."
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., lamented the loss of additional funding for education, saying it would have helped stabilize a shortfall in Pell Grants and would have stemmed some district cuts.
Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at 573-4243 or rbodfield@azstarnet.com
