White House claims GOP spend plan would be ‘windfall for drug cartels’
The Biden administration has stepped up its finger-pointing at House Republicans, circulating talking points suggesting a GOP plan to avert a partial government shutdown could be a boon to murderous drug cartels.
House Republicans have been mulling a temporary spending patch — known as a continuing resolution, or CR — that would dramatically slash non-defense and non-veteran discretionary spending. Now the White House is insisting that those cuts would impair border operations.
“They are holding government funding hostage unless they can jam through a bill that eliminates at least 800 border patrol agents and triggers a windfall for drug cartels,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote in a memo obtained by The Post.
Even if the spending reductions pass the House — no guarantee — they are likely going nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“A vote against a standard short-term funding measure is a vote against paying over $1 billion in salary for Border Patrol and ICE agents working to track down lethal fentanyl and tame our open borders,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned Wednesday.
Ironically, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has framed the shutdown fight in part as a battle over border security.
“I think it’d be very important to have a meeting with the president,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday. “The president could keep government open by doing something on the border.”
McCarthy has repeatedly cited the influx of migrants that has overwhelmed blue states like New York and Massachusetts as a reason to buttress border security efforts in any new government funding bill.
Most iterations of the stopgap bills eyed by GOP leadership would feature provisions from the Secure the Border Act of 2023, including money to construct former President Donald Trump’s wall along the US-Mexico border and hire thousands of new Border Patrol agents.
“Republicans are proposing an extreme continuing resolution that would eliminate 800 CBP agents and officers, allowing 50,000 pounds of cocaine, more than 300 pounds of fentanyl, more than 700 pounds of heroin, and more than 6,000 pounds of methamphetamine to enter our country,” Bates said in his memo, first reported by Fox News.
Bates also touted the administration’s purported efforts to stem the border crisis, including new sanctions announced Wednesday against “individuals and entities for their role in drug trafficking.”
The US has weathered a record-breaking number of migrant encounters, with over 2.86 million recorded so far this fiscal year, according to US Customs and Border Protection.
Bates urged the Congress to pass the bipartisan CR advanced by the Senate Tuesday night, which would keep the government open through Nov. 17 while also allocating more than $6 billion in aid to Ukraine and $6 billion in domestic disaster relief.
McCarthy on Wednesday poured cold water on the prospect of taking that measure up for a vote in the House, saying “I don’t see the support” for it.
A partial shutdown would begin Sept. 30 at 11:59 p.m. unless the House and Senate pass some kind of government funding bill and President Biden.
