House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., blasted Democrats in a televised interview, saying they are now "defunding the borders."
His comments came Thursday on the Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle."
Fox News noted Democrats have moved to cut Customs and Border Protection’s discretionary funding by nearly a billion dollars.
"You know what else the Democrats are doing?" McCarthy asked. "They didn’t add one extra dollar to the Border Patrol agents who are working overtime, who are being pushed like they've never been pushed before to protect us.
"It's not just enough for the Democrats to defund our cities, now they are defunding the borders, making this nation unsafe in so many places."
A draft of the Homeland Security funding bill was released by the House Appropriations this week. It would provide $14.11 billion in net discretionary funding for Customs and Border Protection, down $927 million from fiscal year 2021, according to Fox News.
McCarthy echoed his remarks in a tweet on Friday.
He wrote: "It wasn’t enough for Democrats to defund police. Now they’re trying to defund our border patrol."
Fox News said a summary of the funding bill noted that it provides no additional funds for Border Patrol agents or funding of a wall at the southern border. And it also rescinds more than $2 billion from prior appropriations for construction of the border wall.
Former President Donald Trump has ripped Biden’s border policy.
It is a vast understatement to say Biden "has provoked a national security disaster" at the southern border, Trump wrote Wednesday in an opinion column.
"Biden has enacted the most radical open borders agenda imaginable," Trump said in commentary posted in The Washington Times. "This is perhaps the first time in world history a nation has purposely and systematically dismantled its own defenses to invite millions of foreign migrants to enter its territory and break its law."
Trump slammed Biden for "utterly depraved" polices that included restoring catch-and-release, tearing up asylum agreements with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and announcing "that anyone on the planet who lives in a crime-afflicted area now qualifies for asylum in the United States."
"Of all the vindictive, shocking, and self-defeating border security actions Joe Biden has taken, none surpasses his decision to stop the final completion of the wall," Trump said.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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