Senate adds border security funding to Defense bill

House Republican leaders -- with the White House's apparent blessing -- have endorsed a Senate move to add $1.8 billion in new spending for border security on top of additional billions already contained in House and Senate fiscal 2007 Homeland Security appropriations bills.

The extra funding, along with some scaled-back policy initiatives aimed at stanching illegal immigration, is designed to placate voters in the absence of a comprehensive immigration overhaul package, which GOP leaders concede will not happen before the elections.

The Senate addition is included in the $468.4 billion fiscal 2007 Defense spending bill. It would fund fencing and vehicle barriers along the Mexican border, as authorized in the Senate-passed immigration overhaul bill.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has endorsed the $1.8 billion addition, but the contents of the final package will be subject to House-Senate negotiations, as will the eventual vehicle for the funds.

Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., will be a major player in the talks, and he has his own ideas about how to spend the money, including for Coast Guard and Border Patrol vehicles and aircraft.

House Republican aides said there was significant pressure from within the Republican Conference to include the funds in the fiscal 2007 Homeland Security bill rather than the Defense spending bill, as a more appropriate vehicle and not to divert funds from troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If GOP leaders take that approach, not only will Gregg's leverage be strengthened, but in the much smaller $32 billion Homeland Security bill it will be more difficult to find offsets than in the massive Defense bill. That measure contains an emergency $63.1 billion "bridge fund" that is nearly double the entire Homeland Security bill. "It's going to happen," a House leadership aide said. "It's just a question of what's the vehicle."

House conservatives have been quiet about the added costs, but GOP aides said they were unlikely to raise a fuss over something as politically important to the party's chances in November. Similarly, while White House officials said they were reserving judgment until seeing the final package, they said there would likely be quiet assent to whatever House and Senate GOP leaders eventually decide.

Another factor which could make the Homeland Security bill the vehicle is that House-Senate negotiations on the Defense bill could be complicated by a House rules change governing earmarked spending. Slated for the floor next week, the change would require committees to disclose project sponsors in completed conference reports -- including the Defense bill.

The House Defense bill contains $5 billion in earmarks. House Rules Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., said the rule change would apply immediately once approved, meaning potentially plenty of extra staff work that could lengthen House-Senate Defense negotiations before a conference report could reach the floor.