House Republicans seek to dodge border wall vote
By TED HESSON 07/25/2017 06:35 PM EDT
House Republicans are poised to fund $1.6 billion for President Donald Trump's border wall through a procedural maneuver designed to avoid a floor vote that might fail.
The House Rules Committee is expected to attach funding for the wall that Trump has proposed building along the Mexican border to the so-called minibus, a downsized spending package for the Pentagon, the Energy Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the legislative branch — but not DHS, the Cabinet agency responsible for the wall.
If an amendment to fund the wall is adopted by the Rules Committee, this line item can circumvent a floor vote, sparing GOP immigration moderates and fiscal hawks from being pressed to approve a project that their constituents might view as xenophobic, misguided and wasteful — and sparing GOP leaders possible defeat.
Border wall skeptics like Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a moderate Republican from a majority-Hispanic district in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, are well aware that they're being bypassed. “I’m not OK (with it), but it is what it is,” Ros-Lehtinen told POLITICO in an interview. “We hope that it will be dealt with later on, but it looks like it’s going to be included in the package.” Perhaps, she said, it will set the table for a broader deal on immigration reform.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/25/republicans-border-wall-vote-240957