GOP Senators are refusing to approve more funding for President Joe Biden’s quiet transportation of economic migrants from the border to Americans’ workplaces and communities, says a top Democratic Senator.
The complaint appears as Democrats and their media allies fiercely denounce the very public — but small-scale transport — of Biden’s migrants from the border to New York, Washington, DC, and Martha’s Vineyard.
If the political standoff continues, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may run out of cash needed to keep moving roughly 130,000 migrants away from border towns each month.
The national election is seven weeks from today, on November 8.
The GOP inaction was revealed on September 20 by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CN), who chairs the homeland security panel of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee:
I hope my Republican colleagues will put politics aside to support funding in the upcoming CR for a program that provides humanitarian assistance for migrants and their families. The Emergency Food and Shelter Program is a vital tool that provides humanitarian aid to migrants and helps the Border Patrol reduce overcrowding at its facilities.
The statement is unusual because the members of the House and Senate appropriations committees tend to cooperate as they quietly divvy up federal funding for their mostly non-ideological purposes. The appropriators form their own social club on Capitol Hill and usually try to exclude deep ideological fights.
Much of the conflict is hidden because the professional staffers in both parties make many trades and compromises for the legislators to approve. For example, they might agree to fund a business giveaway at the request of several Republicans in exchange for the Republicans endorsing a progressive giveaway favored by several Democrats.
But that cooperation seems to have broken down amid Biden’s migration disaster and the impending November election.
Murphy’s comment suggests Republicans are refusing to further fund the Democrats’ northside migrant smuggling network. The network has already moved at least one million southern migrants from the U.S. border into U.S. homes and jobs this year.
Few reporters track the spending — which may exceed $10 billion in 2021 — because the funding is hidden in many accounts, which are often labeled as disaster programs to help Americans.
Murphy wrote:
The Emergency Food and Shelter Program is a vital tool that provides humanitarian aid to migrants and helps the Border Patrol reduce overcrowding at its facilities. If Republicans were serious about more effectively managing the border, they would support increased funding for a program that the Border Patrol views as critical. Instead, they want chaos, so they cheer on the Governors of Texas and Florida as they use millions in taxpayer dollars to exploit desperate and vulnerable people with cruel political stunts.
On September 15, 10 Democratic senators asked the top four Democratic and GOP appropriators to keep the migrant pipeline working:
Funds appropriated through FY 22 [which ends October 1] are quickly being drawn down and in the absence of full-year funding, grantees of the program are currently grappling with how to continue to provide critical services to this vulnerable population. Communities and organizations are on the front-lines of assisting migrants coming to our border and resources are being stretched thin as they take on the role of performing a federal government function. This funding is vitally important as more cities in the United States receive refugees and asylum seekers.
The signatories to the letter include Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who is facing a tough challenge from GOP candidate, Blake Masters.
Murphy’s Republican counterpart in the appropriations process is Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).
On September 20, Capito posted a video of a floor speech in which she denounced the Democrats’ excessive spending:
Another West Virginian wrote to me about the tough choices her family is having to make: “The economy has crumbled in a blink of an eye. My husband and I have full-time jobs and two children. I’m tearful because I sit here looking at upcoming bills and I’m having to decide to pay a bill or buy groceries.” A resident from Weston, West Virginia told me that his insurance premiums increased, and when he asked the company why that happened, they told him it was due to inflation.
Biden’s northside migrant-distribution network was built by Democrats to sneak the migrants into Americans’ society, and also to keep the unpopular migration policy out of the evening news shows.
Mayorkas’ northside smuggling network has successfully hidden the scale and impact of Biden’s migration from the public. For example, a Harvard Harris poll in June 2021 showed that 71 percent of respondents deeply underestimated the monthly flow of migrants into Americans’ jobs, apartments, schools, and culture.
The smuggling is managed by Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, who runs the Department of Homeland Security. Much of Mayorkas’ smuggling — including the nighttime flights — has been funded by taxpayer money transferred from various federal programs to contractor-run buses and non-profit shelters. Catholic Charities is one of the leading groups, and it operates bus services from the border to New York.
GOP legislators are also helping to conceal the migration because they refuse to directly link Biden’s migration policy to the public’s top-ranked concerns about the economy, wages, and inflation.
Instead, under pressure from GOP donors, the GOP legislators treat Biden’s migration as a non-pocketbook issue of border chaos, migrant crime, and drug smuggling.
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