Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, told Breitbart News that Congress has an opportunity to “close the southern border” by passing funding bills including both reductions in spending and tough border enforcement provisions conservatives have long supported.
Westerman advocated passage of the stopgap continuing resolution, or CR, championed by Speaker Kevin McCarthy that includes H.R. 2, a tough border security bill passed earlier this year by the House, to give Congress more time to pass long-term spending bills. “I think we’ve got an option here to keep the government open and close the southern border. That’s the proposal that Speaker McCarthy has come up with to fund the government on a short-term CR while we continue to work on the [long-term] appropriations bill, but with that CR, to have — to put our H.R. 2 Secure the Border Act policy in the CR, to force Joe Biden to close the border. But if we can’t get that passed, we’re basically voting to close the government and keep the border open.”
The Arkansan argued that Republicans must do better at using government funding bills to institute more oversight over federal agencies and highlighted his fight against the Biden administration’s housing of migrants on National Park Service land in New York City as an example of a crisis Congress can combat through appropriations. “This is the type of situation where we can go in in an appropriations bill and say, you can’t use federal funds to build migrant centers on Park Service land. You can’t use federal funds to impose speed limit restrictions on vessels in the Gulf of Mexico in their attempt to stop energy production in the Gulf, which by the way, a federal judge yesterday struck that down anyhow. But if we will be more strategic in what we’re doing on these funding bills and use the power of the purse the way I think our founders meant for us to use it, we could have a much bigger impact.”
The Biden administration’s plan to build temporary housing at Floyd Bennett Field in New York City is light on public details, and Westerman, a father of four, has used his perch atop the Natural Resources Committee to press the administration on the risk to the safety of children using the park and in the surrounding area. He told Breitbart News of a recent troubling exchange with administration officials about security at the camps. “The question was raised, [migrants] can walk out of this city or whatever kind of shelter you’re building, down the street and go in the other entrance and come in where kids are on the playground. The response I got was, well, that’s hypothetical. Tell that to parents that’ve got their kids out there playing in a park and you’ve got 18- to 30-year-old males that are single, that are free to come and go, that if something happens to them, they’re not even going to get deported anymore.”
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The escalation of the border crisis has impacted liberal enclaves far from the southern border, and Westerman is hopeful the panic among Biden’s usually reliable allies will stir Biden to action. “That there’s been 6 million illegal migrants crossing the southern border since Joe Biden became president, that we have 25,000 pounds of fentanyl seized at the border this year alone, that we’re losing 300 Americans a day to fentanyl overdose, that wasn’t enough for Biden. He came back and and reinstated Obama’s catch and release policy. He ended the Remain in Mexico policy of President Trump. And now we’ve got 100,000 migrants in New York City, and that’s got Joe Biden’s attention.”
Dozens of recently arrived migrants to New York City camp outside of the Roosevelt Hotel, which has been made into a reception center, as they try to secure temporary housing on August 1, 2023, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty)
Westerman is hopeful House Republicans can pass a funding vehicle that includes tough border policies, but he is acting where he can in the Natural Resources Committee, holding an oversight hearing Wednesday on the migrant camps and the dangerous precedent the administration is setting. “What if they want to build migrant centers in Big Bend National Park in Texas? What if they want to go to Arizona and go to Grand Canyon National Park putting migrant shelters there?
“It would be a horrible precedent if they go through with this, and they’re moving full steam ahead.”
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