The Congressional Budget Office has released its score on how President Barack Obama’s$4.3 billion emergency request on immigration will be spent. The big news? The CBO score confirms that the president’s $4.3 billion emergency request is not warranted. CBO reports that only $25 million of the president’s request would be spent in fiscal year 2014 and the remaining funds would not be spent until the next fiscal year or in the out-years.
Congress is currently debating how to allocate the nearly half-trillion dollars ($492.4 billion) in non-defense discretionary spending that lawmakers authorized in the Ryan–Murray budget deal for fiscal year (FY) 2015. If Congress chose to support the Obama Administration’s approach to dealing with the surge in unaccompanied minors, there is no reason why Congress could not do so within the current Budget Control Act (BCA)cap. Congress has already lifted the cap by $9.2 billion from its original FY 2015 level established by the BCA and could allocate some of the spending increase toward the administration’s border efforts.
Congress should use the appropriations process to properly prioritize spending needs, including for border security. Obama is instead asking Congress to circumvent its already inflated spending cap by exploiting the “emergency” loophole. But this is an “emergency” that White House officials reportedly knew about for years now, but decided to ignore.
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