[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15669]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          BORDER FENCE FUNDING

  (Mrs. BLACKBURN asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, last year we passed the Secure Fence 
Act, which mandated the Department of Defense construct a fence and 
vehicle barriers along 800 miles of the southern border of the U.S., 
from California to Texas. And 283 people in this Chamber, many of them 
Democrats, voted to take this first step in real border security reform 
by funding a secure fence on our southern border.
  But under a new liberal Democrat leadership, actually paying for the 
fence is a whole different matter. Despite the overwhelming support and 
a $2.4 billion increase in the Homeland Security budget, the bill 
before us today actually underfunds the fence by $187 million and ties 
up an additional $700 million in bureaucratic red tape.
  The question is: Why? Nothing has changed. Hundreds of thousands of 
illegal immigrants, drug dealers and possible terrorists continue to 
slip through the cracks in our southern border while we wait for the 
fence on the southern border.
  Where are those people on the other side of the aisle that were 
committed to pay for this security fence last year?
  Mr. Speaker, it is time to fund the fence.

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