Senate Democrats have proposed cutting $1 billion from President Barack Obama's $3.7 billion emergency funding request to deal with a surge of some 57,000 undocumented Central American children across the southern border, according to The Associated Press.
Obama asked lawmakers to approve a $3.7 billion funding request on July 8 to bolster border security and speed deportation proceedings, but Congress has yet to take action on the request, the AP reported.
"Based on a review of what is needed...to meet needs at the border, the bill reduces the president's request by $1 billion," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, according to the AP.
Besides border funding, the Senate Democrats' bill also includes $615 million for fighting wildfires and $225 million to help Israel speed up work on an anti-missile defense system, the AP reported.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, told reporters he hoped Congress would take action on the emergency funding before it starts its August recess in about 10 days, according to the AP.
"These agencies are going to run out of money in mid-August," Reid said, the AP reported.
Many Republicans in both houses of Congress say they are unlikely to approve emergency funding without changes to a 2008 human anti-trafficking law, according to the AP. They want federal authorities to be able to more easily deport children who enter the United States illegally from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Some congressional Democrats say they do not want to speed deportation of children escaping violence in their own countries, with many of the children trying to reunite with relatives living in the United States, the AP reported.
Mikulski said no change to the anti-trafficking law will be included in the Senate bill, according to the AP.
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas told reporters that just approving more money without making changes in the 2008 law was "no solution to the problem," the AP reported.
Cornyn added that the other fundamental cause of the border problem was an impression abroad that "if you can make it to the United States, you'll be able to stay," an impression he said was fueled by Obama's decision in 2012 to ease deportations of some children brought to the United States illegally by their parents before mid-2007, according to the AP.
