S.D.U.T. Editorial

Politics and the border

Reality loses out to a $600 million spending bill

By Union-Tribune Editorial Board,
Sunday, August 15, 2010 at 12:01 a.m.

Proving again that politics trumps rational policy every time, the U.S. Senate went into special session Thursday for only the second time in 40 years to pass a $600 million spending bill to beef up security along the United States-Mexico border.

The legislation, passed by the House earlier last week in a special session of its own, has already been signed into law by President Barack Obama, who had asked the Congress for the money.

It will pay for 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents to be assigned to critical areas along the southwest border, 250 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and 250 more Customs and Border Protection officers. There is also money for new communications equipment and expanded use of unmanned surveillance drones to keep electronic eyes in the sky trained on the border. Nearly $200 million will go to the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to combat drug dealers and immigration smugglers.

And this comes less than three months after Obama called up the National Guard to help on the border, sending 1,200 troops to San Diego County and elsewhere in hot spots between here and Texas.

Is all this necessary and good public policy?

Perhaps. In fact, a number of key political figures, such as Arizona’s two Republican senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, said the $600 million spending bill was a good start but still not enough. And McCain had earlier asked for 6,000 National Guard troops, not the measly 1,200 that Obama mobilized.

But the facts on the ground suggest a different story.

Fact: Lloyd Easterling, the official spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said in June that “the border is safer now than it’s ever been.â€