Political Quotes

“let me say, on behalf of myself and Senator Kyl, we are working on two amendments that deal with the issue of border security. The first I am offering is an amendment to add 500 additional border guards to the underlying bill. The President, in his budget request, suggested we increase the number of border guards to be trained this year to 2,500. One thousand of those were provided in the bill, but this would add an additional 500. The other 1,000 was provided in the emergency supplemental, which was passed earlier this year, which would bring us a total of 1,000, plus 1,000 in this bill, plus 500, to 2,500. The reason the subcommittee and the committee did not provide the additional 500 the President requested was because the President funded those additional 500 with a fee on airline flights. That was something the committee did not include in their mark and, as a result, didn't have the resources the President's budget request had to be able to fund these additional 500 guards. We have been working with Chairman Gregg and the ranking member to try to come up with an offset, understanding this bill is incredibly tight. There are a lot of priorities in the Department of Homeland Security. Trying to find offsets and taking money away from other vital areas of homeland security was a very difficult thing to do.…”