President Trump said Tuesday he would ask Congress for more money to pay for his proposed wall along the southern border so it could be finished faster.
“We’re discussing today the funding of the wall which we very much need. We’re going to ask for an increase in wall spending so we can finish it quicker,” Trump told reporters during a sitdown with GOP lawmakers to discuss immigration.
“We’re spending $1.6 billion now,” the president said, referring to money included in a massive spending bill he signed in March.
“There is a plan for another $1.6 billion, but I’d like to ask this room if we can increase it. I think in light of what’s happened with the drugs, with the human smuggling, with all of the problems, we have to have the wall. We have to have the wall. It stops the drugs, it stops people that we don’t want to have, and it gives us security and safety,” he said.
The House voted down a conservative bill last week that included the $25 billion that the administration said it needed to pay for the wall.
A compromise deal crafted by House conservatives and GOP lawmakers that also includes the $25 billion was expected to come up for a vote Wednesday.
But conservatives don’t like it because, like the defeated bill, it allows a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.
And even if it passed, it would be DOA in the Senate, where no Democrats have voiced any support for it.
The president himself called the compromise — which would outlaw the separation of families at the border — a waste of time because it could never get 60 votes in the Senate.
House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Tuesday he doesn’t have a Plan B if the compromise bill fails, though some GOP lawmakers have toyed with the idea of a stand-alone bill that would only address family separations.
“If that doesn’t succeed, then we’ll cross that bridge. But the last thing I want to do is undercut a vote on what is a great consensus bill,” he said.
The compromise could be the president’s last chance before another spending bill comes due in the fall.
Trump had previously threatened to shut down the government at the end of September if lawmakers do not meet his funding demands for his wall, which he had repeatedly promised that Mexico would pay for.
But Mexico has made it clear it is not paying for the wall.
Also Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Congress that the total number of migrant children in federal custody after being separated from their parents has barely changed since last week.
At a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Azar said HHS currently has 2,047 migrant children in its custody because of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy at the southwest border.
That’s only six fewer children in total than the 2,053 HHS had previously reported as of Wednesday of last week.
Azar didn’t say whether in the meantime additional children had been transferred to HHS.
That’s nowhere near enough progress, Democratic senators questioning the health chief said.
“HHS, Homeland Security, and the Justice Department seem to be doing a lot more to add to the bedlam and deflect blame than they’re doing to tell parents where their kids are,” said Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden.
Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) defended Azar, telling him: “You’ve clearly been saddled with some really tough problems, and I have confidence you’ll handle them expeditiously and well.”
Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence and Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen will meet Thursday in Guatemala to discuss the immigration issue on the southern border with the presidents of Guatemala and Honduras and the vice president of El Salvador.
With Post wires