U.S. Senate leaders made clear in their new $1.7 trillion federal government funding bill that border security is a priority deserving of American taxpayer dollars, particularly when the borders concerned happen to hem foreign nations thousands of miles away.
According to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the bill seeks to appropriate $772.5 billion for non-defense discretionary funding and $858 billion for defense funding.
The bill would allocate:
- $44.9 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies;
- $40.6 billion to disaster relief;
- $47.5 billion to the National Institutes of Health;
- $575 million for so-called "family planning/reproductive health ... in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity";
- nearly $7 billion to combat HIV/ AIDS in foreign nations; and
- hundreds of billions more to a variety of Democrat pet causes, including a "LGBTQ+" museum in New York City and a federal building named after outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The authors of the bill also saw fit to once again bolster the borders of Middle Eastern nations with U.S. tax dollars: $410 million "shall be available to reimburse Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman ... for enhanced border security."
At least "$150,000,000 shall be for Jordan," a country whose human rights practices the U.S. State Department has called into question.
"Up to $500,000,000 of funds appropriated by this Act for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency in 'Operation and Maintenance, Defense-Wide' may be used to provide assistance to the Government of Jordan to support the armed forces of Jordan and to enhance security along its borders," said the bill.
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) highlighted these planned Middle Eastern border expenditures, noting, "America Last in action."
These allocations are not unprecedented. Contrariwise, they appear to be reprints from previous appropriations acts, which have had American funds shore up the defenses of Arab nations for years — especially Jordan.
According to the State Department, America has a long-standing commitment to Jordan's security and stability.
While the Biden administration helped "Jordan mitigate the effects of regional crises, including the strain of refugees from Syria and Iraq on Jordan's budget," over 2.3 million criminal noncitizens stole across the southern border and into the U.S. last year, and 1.7 million came over the year before. In the event that the Biden administration gets its way and Title 42 is lifted, millions more will flood in in 2023.
Arab nations may enjoy greater security at Americans' expense; however, some attention was paid to the U.S. southern border in the bill.
The spending bill calls for $1.5 billion to be set aside for "border management requirements of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection," but none of the funds provided in this section can be use to hire permanent federal employees or to "acquire, maintain, or extend border security technology and capabilities, except for technology and capabilities to improve Border Patrol processing."
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