The $5 billion the House Appropriations Committee allocated to build a wall along the southern border is a “non-starter,” the Senate Appropriations Committee’s vice chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said Thursday.
“Wasting $5 billion of the American taxpayer’s money on a cynical, symbolic, and ineffective border wall — a wall the president has repeatedly promised Mexico would pay for — is a non-starter in the Senate,” Leahy said in a written statement Thursday.
On Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved the Homeland Security spending bill, which included the $5 billion to build 200 miles of a new physical structure along the southern border.
In 2016, Trump campaigned on building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Last week, the president tweeted his support for the bill when it was first released, personally thanking and endorsing Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.
The Senate version of the bill includes $1.6 billion in funding for the wall and limits it to reinforcing existing barriers and “pedestrian fencing.”
Trump vowed not to sign a stop-gap funding measure that lacked funding for the wall.