Border funds requests could reach $1 billion this session
top priorities of public safety and education.”
State Rep. Tan Parker, a Flower Mound Republican who leads the House GOP caucus, added that “a culture of lawlessness on the border” has strained relations between Texas and Mexico.
“Texas has helped tremendously with surge operations to keep these criminal activities to a minimum, but we have done so at a great cost to Texas taxpayers,” Parker said. “If the Obama administration refuses to meet our request, then we call on President-elect Trump to act quickly to reestablish the federal government’s primacy with regard to the border.”
DPS has asked lawmakers this session to approve $320 million for the agency over the next two years to boost its operations on the U.S.-Mexico border. The additional money, on top of the base border-security budget of $750 million, would bring total funding to more than $1 billion.
On Wednesday, Bonnen said he had not reviewed the controversial proposal, but some lawmakers already have cast doubt on the expense as they eye almost-certain budget cuts in the wake of a smaller-than-expect revenue forecast by the state comptroller’s office.
State Rep. Cesar Blanco, an El Paso Democrat who has been critical of the state border funding and has pressed the Department of Public Safety for details to back up claims that the law enforcement surge is producing results, said Bonnen’s invoice to the federal government was political grandstanding. Without the Obama administration as a target in the coming years, Texas Republicans will have to hold their own party accountable, he added.
“Appropriations are originated in Congress, which for several years has been under Republican control,” Blanco said. “House Republicans know they won’t be able to throw the next administration under the bus.”
Calling it “a distraction,” Blanco also said recent border funds from state lawmakers have obscured attention to other areas which are more deserving of state money, including public schools and mental health care.
“There’s been no accountably tied to border security dollars,” he said. “Bonnen said Texas would continue its funding until the border is no longer porous. We don’t know what that means.”
The demand for federal reimbursement for border security efforts is not new.
In 2011, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security requesting a reimbursement of more than $349 million for “the federal government’s failure to properly secure our international borders.”
During the George W. Bush administration, former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, wrote to the U.S. Department of Defense asking for millions of dollars to support the Arizona National Guard’s deployment to the Mexican border.
Neither of those efforts was successful.