Judd Gregg: “So our colleagues understand the lay of the land, because it is a fairly complicated parliamentary situation, the Graham…”

“So our colleagues understand the lay of the land, because it is a fairly complicated parliamentary situation, the Graham amendment, which increases funding for Border Patrol by $3 billion, I would point out that the majority leader, I believe, misspoke when he said the extra $2.2 billion in this bill went to border security. The extra $2.2 billion in this bill, the majority of it exceeds the President's request in the area of first responders, and that is why we did not move that money out of the first responders to fund this. This is in addition to the funding in this bill to fully fund 23,000 Border Patrol agents, 45,000 detention beds, the virtual fence, the hard fence, and to make sure there are enough ICE enforcement officers. So it is a major initiative in the funding area. There is also authorizing language in here. It is the authorizing language which I guess the majority leader has the most concerns about. But that is the underlying bill. The question before the body is, as I understand it, the underlying bill, probably because the authorizing language may not be germane.”