|
You probably missed the vote. It happened at 5 a.m.
While most of Washington was asleep, the Senate passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement package — 52 to 47 — after an 18-hour marathon session. It funds ICE and Border Patrol through the rest of the president’s term. This comes on top of $191 billion Congress already committed last July through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That’s $261 billion in new immigration enforcement money in less than a year.
Now... most people hear “border security” and nod along. Fair enough. But what gets lost is the sheer scale of the numbers. When DHS was created in 2003, ICE and Border Patrol had a combined annual budget of $9.2 billion. That was real money. Between 2003 and 2024, Congress spent roughly $324 billion total on those two agencies. Took 22 years to spend that much.
And here’s the part that really gets me. With these two reconciliation bills, Congress committed almost as much money in 12 months — $261 billion — as it spent in the previous 22 years combined. ICE alone has received more than 11 times its annual budget. According to the Cato Institute, DHS still has about $150 billion in unspent reconciliation funds sitting on the books.
Whether you think that’s money well spent depends on your politics. But as an old economics teacher, I’ll say this: when any government agency gets 7 to 11 times its annual budget in a single year — through a process that bypasses the normal oversight rules — that’s worth paying attention to. Not because of the mission. Because of the math. That much money, moving that fast, with that little accounting... history says waste follows.
The Border Patrol had 450 agents and a budget of $1 million when it was created in 1924. It took 70 years to get to $363 million. It took 12 months to get to $261 billion. That’s a different kind of growth curve.
|
