The Senate next week will try to advance President Trump’s emergency spending request to deal with the massive surge in illegal immigration on the Texas border.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Senate Appropriations Committee will author and vote on a supplemental spending bill for the border, where more than 100,000 illegal immigrants each month have been apprehended.
“I hope our Democratic friends in the Senate will at long last follow our lead here and address this significant crisis,” McConnell said.
Trump sent a $4.5 billion request for emergency funding earlier this year and hoped lawmakers would include it in a disaster aid package. It includes money to help agencies deal with the surge in illegal immigration. It does not include funding for a wall or other border structure.
But Democrats refused to vote for the disaster aid bill unless the border funding provision was stripped out. The GOP and Trump agreed to the legislation without the border funding.
Democrats want changes to the emergency funding bill, namely the removal of money that would pay for additional detention beds, which they have long opposed.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday the Senate should write a bipartisan spending measure, and he is hopeful the two parties can find a compromise.
Schumer said Democrats support about $3.3 billion but that more than $1 billion is made up of expenditures they don’t like.
“There are some things that are not acceptable and some things we don’t love but could accept,” Schumer said, adding that McConnell, “has got to sit down and talk to us.”
Schumer said Democrats want to pass a bill.
“There is a humanitarian need to help these people.”
