by Susan Ferrechio | Aug 16, 2017, 12:05 PM

A plan to fund President Trump's long-promised southern border wall faces a significant obstacle in the Senate, where Democrats have vowed to oppose attaching it to a must-pass spending bill and Republican leaders are leaning toward different border security language.

Senate Republicans are eager to avoid a spending showdown with Democrats, which is why they've shifted their border security ambitions away from the $1.6 billion provided in the House-passed spending bill. Instead, GOP senators are considering a broader plan to improve border security through a combination of infrastructure, technology and enforcement.

The author of the legislation, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, backs a border wall, but is advocating his comprehensive approach over an immediate infusion of money.

"We don't know how that $1.6 billion fits into an overall plan for the entire southern border," Cornyn said this month. "Doing this on a piecemeal basis I think is really not the most efficient and most practical and most effective way to do it."

That plan clashes with the one put forward by President Trump, whose fiscal 2018 budget includes $1.6 billion for a "bricks and mortar" wall along the southern border. Still, Republicans seem to be on a path toward negotiating a spending deal with Democrats, whose support is needed if the bill is going to clear the Senate's 60-vote filibuster hurdle by the end of September.

Senate Democrats have said they will oppose spending legislation with "poison pill riders," including funding for what Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., calls "the ineffective border wall."

Outside advocacy groups who seek to end illegal immigration already fear the border wall money will be sidelined by the GOP in an effort to prevent a politically treacherous spending showdown.

"The Republican leadership has a tendency to not fight too hard for these things," Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told the Washington Examiner.

But FAIR and other advocacy groups are continuing to put pressure on Congress to pass the border wall funding and GOP leaders are aware Trump may threaten to veto the fiscal 2018 spending measure without it.

Trump failed to get the border wall money included in a spending bill passed earlier this year by the GOP-led House and Senate, prompting him to tweet, "Our country needs a good ‘shutdown' in September to fix mess!"

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has in the past dodged spending fights with Democrats by ditching conservative wish-list items Democrats oppose. But this year, he must contend not only with Trump, but with his own rank-and-file members who want border wall money included in the 2018 spending package.

Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., told the Washington Examiner he will include the money in the fiscal 2018 Homeland Security spending bill.

"It's a huge priority for the president," Boozman said. "We are going to work really hard to get it done. Everybody on our side is interested in trying to get it done."

Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., told MSNBC on Tuesday he believes Congress will approve border wall funding this year, pointing out that the $1.6 billion would help complete a southern border fence that won bipartisan approval in Congress in 2006.

"I suspect there might be some additional money for establishing operational control of the border," Dent said. "I don't think it's going to be a huge amount of money."

But Cornyn, the number-two Republican in the Senate, said he is focused on moving his own legislation, which would close loopholes in immigration enforcement, add border patrol agents and boost technology and tactical infrastructure, which might still include a wall.

"My goal is to have some hearings on that in September when we get back," Cornyn told the Washington Examiner.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tr...rticle/2631662