by Rhonda Bodfield

Arizona Daily Star Pueblo Politics Blog

Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords says she is outraged at her Senate colleagues for killing $700 million in emergency border security funds from a war funding appropriations bill.

On Thursday night, the Senate voted against some $20 billion in domestic spending that was tacked onto a $59 billion war funding request. The additional projects included stepped-up border security efforts, as well as money for teachers, summer jobs and student loans.

In large part, Republicans said the funding was an end-run around the pay-as-you-go law that requires new discretionary spending to be offset with either cuts or revenue increases.

Giffords, who has an ad running touting her efforts on border security, and who is poised to receive a service award Saturday morning from the Arizona Cattlemen’s Association for her work on border issues, said stripping out the funding calls into question how effective the National Guard can be when it takes its place on the border next month.

President Obama decided in May to put 1,200 soldiers — 524 of them in Arizona — along the southern border.

“Southern Arizonans should be appalled that the United States Senate said ‘no’ to supporting the troops on the border, said ‘no’ to protecting the ranchers in my district who are threatened daily and said ‘no’ to increasing border patrol agents who would help stop the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants into our country,” Giffords said in a written statement.

Chalking the vote up to Washington gridlock, Giffords said the troops were only intended to serve as a bridge until more border staff arrived. “This long-overdue deployment was not to take place in a vacuum, and the success of their mission now is in doubt,” she said.

The money stripped from the bill included $208 million for 1,200 additional Border Patrol agents, $136 million for additional officers and canine teams at ports of entry, as well as money for additional courts and detention costs.

The House version of the supplemental appropriations bill passed earlier this month with 239 votes in support. Fifteen Democrats and 167 of 177 Republicans voted against the measure.

Giffords said she sought the funding because of the increased violence in Mexico and because the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector apprehends nearly half of the illegal immigrants detained in the entire nation.

“The drug cartels have become more brazen than ever,” Giffords continued, “and it is commonplace to see heavily armed drug runners coming across ranch land and into the communities of Southern Arizona.”

Lt. Valentine Castillo, a spokesman for the Arizona National Guard, said he could not comment on Giffords’ concerns.

Sen. Jon Kyl said on the Greta VanSusteren show Thursday night that there are several keys to securing the border, including the Guard troops, additional surveillance equipment and an adequate supply of Border Patrol staff. “I mean, there is no substitute for the law enforcement officials,” he said.

His staff did not return calls seeking comment about the vote.

In a floor statement, Sen. John McCain said he could not support it because it was not paid for and the price tag was too high.

He said that could have been remedied with a host of cuts, including a one-year moratorium on raises and bonuses for federal employees, reducing printing costs of government documents, eliminating non-essential government travel and cutting the budgets of members of Congress. “We’ve saddled future generations with literally trillions of dollars of debt,” he said.

“When is it going to end? If we are going to dig ourselves out of this fiscal mess then we must begin to make some very tough and often politically unpopular decisions,” McCain said.

Conceding some of the funding requests could very well be necessary — and singling out border security as one area in need — McCain said it should not have been added to a bill meant to provide support for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said, too, that the House border package didn’t provide as much as the President requested for construction and maintenance of the border fence.

Asked to respond to McCain’s concerns that the spending was a way around the PAYGO provisions, Giffords’ spokesman C.J. Karamargin said, “The congresswoman has said all along that border security has to be a top priority. Period.”

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, meanwhile, was dismayed at losing the additional education resources, saying it would have helped stem cuts to school districts and address a continuing shortfall in Pell Grants.

“I am dismayed at the Senate for not understanding what our communities are going through on a daily basis,” the Tucson Democrat said. “This will add to burden that our teachers already face.”