The U. S. House of Reps late Jan. 3 passed bills to fund and reopen government departments, but with no funding for a border wall.
The U. S. House of Representatives late Thursday, Jan. 3, passed bills to fund and reopen furloughed government departments for the short term, but refused to include any funding as for a border wall as requested by President Trump.
The House cleared two separate pieces of legislation .
A stopgap spending bill, which passed 239 to 192, would grant $1.3 billion to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to fund it through until Feb. 8. However, none of that money would go towards construction of a wall.
Another six-bill package, which passed at 241 to 190, would grant funding to the remaining federal agencies through Sept. 30.
President Donald Trump has said that he won’t be signing a spending bill that doesn’t include wall funding. He has indicated that he would accept less than the $5 billion he originally asked for but did not specify the amount.
New Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said she won’t support funding for a wall, saying it’s “expensive” and “ineffective.”
“We’re talking about border security,” Pelosi said in an interview with Today on Jan. 3. “There’s no amount of persuasion he can do to say to us, ‘We want you to do something that is not effective, that costs billions of dollars, that sends the wrong message about who we are as a country.’”
But the President disagrees.
Hours ahead of the House vote, Trump took to the White House briefing room to address the media about border security—the first time he has spoken from that podium.
“You can call it a barrier, you can call it whatever you want, but essentially, we need protection in our country,” he said.
