House Appropriations Committee approves DHS spending measure

House Appropriations Committee approves DHS spending measure

Published 21 July 2015

 

The House Appropriations Committee approved its FY 2016 spending bill funding homeland security programs. The bill provides DHS with $39.3 billion in discretionary funding, which is $337 million below the amount enacted for FY 2015 and $2 billion less than the president’s request. The committee’s consideration of the measure was dominated by acrimonious debate over sanctuary cities, and House appropriators adopted three Republican-sponsored amendments related to the killing of a San Francisco woman by an immigrant who was in the United States illegally after being deported to Mexico several times.

The House Appropriations Committee approved its FY 2016 spending bill funding homeland security programs. The bill provides DHS with $39.3 billion in discretionary funding, which is $337 million below the amount enacted for FY 2015 and $2 billion less than the president’s request.
The committee’s consideration of the measure was dominated by acrimonious debate over sanctuary cities. debate of the DHS measure. The National Law Review reports that House appropriators adopted three Republican-sponsored amendments related to the killing of a San Francisco woman by an immigrant who was in the United States illegally after being deported to Mexico several times.

• One of the amendments, adopted along party lines, would deny sanctuary cities certain DHS funding grants, including those related to FEMA.
• Committee members from both parties supported a manager’s amendment which would increase funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Criminal Alien and Fugitive Operations programs, to increase support for enforcement.
• The House measure also withheld funding for implementation of the president’s executive orders on immigration, and included a rider preventing any such funding until an ongoing federal injunction is lifted (see more on the injunction in “Federal judge in Texas temporarily blocks Obama’s executive order,” HSNW, 18 February 2015).

The homeland security spending bill is the final to be marked up by the House Appropriations Committee, and NLR notes that this is the first time in six years that all twelve measures have been passed under regular order.
Action on appropriations bills, however, currently remains stalled in both chambers.