Your Government at Work #4972: Failure to Fund Border Fence

Senate In May the US Senate voted to build a 370 mile fence on the United States – Mexico Border. Now 2 months later, the same Senate voted against funding the fence essentially killing the project by a vote of 71–29. The main reason given was that it would take money out of other Homeland Security projects.

To me this screams; we have pork coming to our districts and we do not want to give up any of that to build a fence that could have an actual impact. What is it going to take to get the Senators from both parties to wake up and realize they serve us? The mentality of the Senate is to vote on things but not fund them so they look good for the moment but never get things done.

Maybe next time they vote themselves a pay raise they will not fund that too. Yeah right…

“We do a lot of talking. We do a lot of legislating,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican whose amendment to fund the fence was killed on a 71-29 vote. “The things we do often sound very good, but we never quite get there.”
Mr. Sessions offered his amendment to authorize $1.8 billion to pay for the fencing that the Senate voted 83-16 to build along high-traffic areas of the border with Mexico. In the same vote on May 17, the Senate also directed 500 miles of vehicle barriers to be built along the border.
But the May vote simply authorized the fencing and vehicle barriers, which on Capitol Hill is a different matter from approving the federal expenditures needed to build it.
“If we never appropriate the money needed to construct these miles of fencing and vehicle barriers, those miles of fencing and vehicle barriers will never actually be constructed,” Mr. Sessions told his colleagues yesterday before the vote.
Virtually all Democrats were joined by the chamber’s lone independent and 28 Republicans in opposing Mr. Session’s amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations Act. Only two Democrats — Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Thomas R. Carper of Delaware — supported funding the fence. via The Washington Times