So the ability to accomplish those good intentions Isnt there. Also. the bill that is coming through the authorizing committee creates a number of mandates. It says: This shall be done by Border Patrol. this shall be done by Customs. this shall be done by the Coast Guard. I am not sure it addresses the Coast Guard. but it has a number of mandates for Border Patrol and Immigration. and the practical effect of that is that it is artificially directing and redirecting flows of revenues and resources. and it may actually. as a result of those mandates. end up undermining our ability to effectively address the border. As the bill comes to the floor. which I hope will be this week. we can discuss that. and I am sure we can deal with those kinds of issues. But the bottom line is simply this: We can accomplish security on the southern border. We can know to a large extent who is coming in and out of this country. We can limit dramaticallyI mean dramatically. down to a trickle for all intents and purposesthe number of people who get into this country illegally across our southern border by the application of resources which. in the relative context of national defense. are quite small and in the relative context of the overall national budget are extraordinarily small. If we have to pay for them. we should pay for them through some sort of a border security fee. It can be done. Why hasnt it been done? Because border security has been a stepchild around here to national defense for a long time. I find that unacceptable myself. If we are going to have a defense budget which spends $440 billion. up from $289 billion just 5 years ago. on top of which we are spending $90 billion a year to fight a war. one has to ask: What is the core defense budget for?
Keywords matched
border security Border Patrol Immigration