Thread: Congress in no hurry for fence!

Congress in no hurry for border fence
The Associated Press

A law to erect hundreds of miles of fence on the U.S.-Mexico border is on the books and money to start it has been OK'd, but Republicans are nervous that now that they've lost control of Congress, they'll never see it built.


The law passed last year says Congress, now in control of Democrats who generally oppose the fence, doesn't have to release money to build it until lawmakers approve how the fence will be built.


Based on the comments of some Democrats, there's no rush to make that happen.


Rep. Bennie Thompson, House Homeland Security Committee chairman, said he wants to see a plan for securing the northern and southern borders from the Department of Homeland Security and hold a hearing on those plans instead of focusing only on fence construction and funding.
"My preference is to delay the construction of a fence until we have a plan," said Thompson, D-Ga.


House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said this week Democrats still want to secure the border but want "the best possible way to do it."


Hoyer voted against the fence last year, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Thompson and 128 other Democrats in the House. In the Senate, 26 Democrats voted for the fence law, including Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who chairs the Appropriations Committee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada voted against the fence.


The law dictates that in Texas a fence would stretch east out of El Paso; from Del Rio to Eagle Pass and Laredo to Brownsville, leaving a huge gap between Del Rio and Laredo. It also sets locations in California and calls for fencing off the Arizona border from Mexico. Though the total fencing was believed to be about 700 miles, congressional researchers say it is closer to 850 miles.


A separate law funding Homeland Security Department spending provided $1.2 billion for the fencing.


But that law also withholds $950 million of the sum until the House and Senate appropriations committees approve the department's plan for spending the money, giving those committees say over the design, location and length of the fence.


Attempts to get comment from the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees were unsuccessful.


But Republicans have been pushing nonetheless, restating their arguments for a fence and dashing off letters to President Bush asking him to request more money for the fence's construction in his 2008 budget.

In a recent news conference, fence backers Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and Rep. Peter King, R-Iowa, ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, criticized recent estimates of the cost of erecting 854 miles of fencing as overblown.
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/39033.php

I just heard Rep. Ed Royce of CA talking about the fence. He indicated that the public really needs to scream long and loud and force the Dems to build this fence. Whether it gets done WILL depend on public outcry. This will be an acid test, especially for the blue dog Democrats who ran on their tough stance on illegal immigration.

The cost, which has been determined in 3 separate studies will be $3 million per mile and will be nowhere near the ~$80 billion total estimate that came out a week ago - this estimate is false, false, false. It includes huge costs for maintenance of the fence for 25 years, and to the tune of what it would cost to rebuild the whole thing multiple times!

Write your reps and demand that the fence be built!