Tucked into the budget reconciliation bill is a Texas-sized golden nugget: $13.5 billion that could pay back what the state spent on border security during the Biden administration.
The bill – which passed Congress on July 3 – doesn’t mention Texas by name. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lobbied hard for the line item’s inclusion, and the state’s Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn fought for the reimbursement.
“Under Operation Lone Star, Texas allocated more than $11 billion of Texas taxpayer money for border security, and earlier this year I requested Congress reimburse Texas for these costs in full,” Abbott said in a May statement, after an initial version of the bill passed in the House of Representatives.
The new “State Border Border Security Reinforcement Fund” earmarks $10 billion for grants to states that paid for border barriers or other security measures beginning Jan. 20, 2021 – President Joe Biden’s inauguration day.
Notably, during the Biden administration, no other state spent more than Texas on border security measures.
Under Operation Lone Star, the state deployed thousands of Texas National Guard troops to the border, placed controversial buoy barriers in the Rio Grande and paid to bus more than 100,000 migrants to Democrat-led cities around the country.
Abbott was one of Biden’s leading critics on the border during a period when the Border Patrol was registering more than 2 million migrant encounters a year – many of them lawful asylum-seekers.
The “reinforcement” provision “just says ‘states can apply.’ But what states incurred expenses? Texas and Arizona,” said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America.
Early during the Biden administration, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, sought to build a makeshift border barrier out of old shipping containers.
But legal challenges forced his administration to remove the barrier, and his Democratic successor, Gov. Katie Hobbs, had previously asked the Biden administration to reimburse the state for border security funding totaling $513 million.
The budget reconciliation bill includes an additional $3.5 billion under a fund whose acronym spells BIDEN: “Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide.” That money can be disbursed to states that aid the federal government in its immigration crackdown.
In an emailed response to questions, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris declined to say how much money Texas will apply for but told USA TODAY the governor “will continue to work closely with the Trump administration to secure the border. “
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Budget bill includes $10B for states that spent on border security
