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Elizabeth Frantz

“House Republicans took numerous votes that would have damaged economic growth and harmed our national security, like attempting to eliminate over 2,000 Border Patrol agents.”

— deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates, in a statement, Jan. 10

House Republicans continue to “do political stunts. They get in the way. They voted in May to eliminate 2,000 Border Patrol agents. That’s what they’re doing.”

— White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2024/01/10/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-nsc-coordinator-for-strategic-communications-john-kirby-january-10-2024/" target="_blank">at a media briefing</a>, Jan. 10

“After voting in 2023 to eliminate over 2,000 Border Patrol agents and erode our capacity to seize fentanyl earlier in 2023, House Republicans left Washington in mid-December.”

— Bates, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/03/white-house-republicans-migrant-crisis-00133570" target=_blank>in a statement,</a> Jan. 3

“You know, last May, the Speaker and … the Republicans in the House, they voted to get rid of 2,000 Border Patrol agents. I mean, that’s their focus. So, of course, that’s not helpful.”

— Jean-Pierre, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2024/01/03/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-nsc-coordinator-for-strategic-communications-john-kirby-36/" target="_blank">at a media briefing</a>, Jan. 3

When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) led lawmakers on a trip to the southern border earlier this month, the White House responded with blistering statements about how House Republicans had sought to eliminate 2,000 Border Patrol agents. The figure has been repeated in a relentless drumbeat whenever the Biden administration is challenged about the surge of migrants seeking to enter the United States.

But there is a big problem with this number. It’s not based on an actual vote on the Homeland Security budget. Instead, it’s a White House estimate on the impact of a bill the House passed in 2023 as an opening bid in budget talks with the Biden administration. When it came to an actual vote for border security, the House in September passed an appropriations bill that funded an additional 1,795 Border Patrol agents. That was four times the increase (350 agents) that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a> had <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/U.S.%20CUSTOMS%20AND%20BORDER%20PROTECTION_Remediated.pdf" target=_blank>requested in his own 2024 budget proposal</a>.

As we noted last year when we <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/04/white-house-touts-illusory-va-cuts-gop-ducks-budget-specifics/" target=_blank>examined</a> similar White House claims that House Republicans cut spending for veterans, the specific numbers used by the White House give an illusion of accuracy to made-up math.

The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2811/text" target=_blank>Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023</a>, the original House bill to raise the debt limit, was an amalgam of specific cuts and vague aspirations to reduce $1.5 trillion in spending. House GOP leaders crafted the bill that way because specifics on which programs would be targeted for cuts would have probably translated into fewer votes, potentially making it impossible to win approval for the bill.

Ordinarily, a congressional budget resolution — which this was not — would indicate the dollar amounts to be spent in 19 spending categories, known as “budget functions.” But the top-line number was a clue that big reductions in spending were anticipated. The bill would have essentially set fiscal 2024 spending (which started on Oct. 1) at the same level as fiscal 2022 — despite rising costs in the past two years because of population growth and high inflation. One dollar in 2024 will not buy nearly as much in government services as it did in 2022.

Administration officials saw the House bill’s vagueness as an opportunity to go on the attack. After Biden suggested Republicans would target Social Security and Medicare, GOP lawmakers insisted the old-age programs were off the table — even though they are a substantial part of the government budget. Numerous GOP lawmakers also said they would not touch defense spending and might even increase it.

So administration officials simply removed one budget function — 050, which funds the military activities of the Defense Department, the nuclear weapons-related activities of the Energy Department and national security activities in several other agencies — and then calculated what the impact would be on the rest of the discretionary budget. Function 050 accounts for about 44 percent of all discretionary budget authority, <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/58632" target=_blank>according to the Congressional Budget Office</a>.

With defense off the table, Republicans essentially would have needed to double the cuts in nondefense discretionary spending to achieve the $1.5 trillion annual spending target. The White House assumed that required a 22 percent reduction in spending across all other agencies, such as Homeland Security. As a result, the administration calculated, the size of the Border Patrol would need to be slashed by 2,000 through layoffs, attrition and furloughs to meet the 22 percent target. If Republicans wanted to spare Border Patrol as they did the military, then the cuts would increase elsewhere in the government.

The math was never going to work, but that did not stop Republicans from bragging about how deep the spending reductions would be.

“Given these dire economic realities, House Republicans just passed a bill to both pay our debts and usher in the largest spending cuts in American history so we can begin to put our country on a sustainable fiscal path,” declared Johnson, then a rank-and-file House member, in <a href="https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/opinion/2023/05/14/its-time-for-president-biden-to-put-people-over-politics-on-debt-ceiling-talks/70208702007/" target="_blank">a May opinion article</a> in the Shreveport Times.

But later that month, Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/31/whats-in-debt-ceiling-deal/" target="_blank">cut a deal</a> that essentially froze spending in exchange for suspending the debt limit until 2025. In effect, House Republicans backed off their demand for deep spending reductions in exchange for a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/26/debt-ceiling-explained/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">debt ceiling</a> increase.

Then, in late September, the House by a vote of 220-208 passed an appropriations bill for the Homeland Security Department that would bring the number of Border Patrol agents to 22,000, up from around 20,000 now. The House Appropriations Committee, in <a href="https://www.congress.gov/118/crpt/hrpt123/CRPT-118hrpt123.pdf" target=_blank>an accompanying report</a>, said that there was an urgent need to bolster the number of agents and expressed frustration the agency had struggled to hire agents.

“The Committee provides additional flexibility to use funding which cannot be readily executed in fiscal year 2024 to hire agents for targeted Border Patrol Agent retention and recruitment efforts, to support increasing situational awareness, operational readiness, improve employment analytics, and return agents to their primary law enforcement functions including replacing the capabilities currently provided by the Department of Defense,” the committee said.

The Senate Appropriations Committee in July passed <a href="https://www.congress.gov/118/crpt/srpt85/CRPT-118srpt85.pdf" target=_blank>an appropriations bill</a> that would add just 145 Border Patrol agents. So, the House and Senate versions still need to reconciled.

Still, as we noted, Biden’s 2024 budget proposal had called for adding 350 Border Patrol agents, so the House far exceeded his request. Yet the administration continues to refer to its own estimate from last May as an affirmative vote to cut 2,000 agents — even though the bill said no such thing and there is no indication this was ever a policy preference for Republicans.

<a href="https://equitablegrowth.org/people/michael-linden/" target=_blank>Michael Linden</a>, a former White House official who was part of the debt limit talks and is now at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, said the debt limit bill set “extremely low targets” for discretionary spending. He did not think it was fair to let Republicans claim credit for cutting spending when it’s impossible to know how lawmakers would have written appropriations bills if they had been forced to abide by those targets. He noted that House Republicans also have voted for or advocated continuing resolutions that still might trigger sharp reductions in Border Patrol spending, notwithstanding passage of the House bill.

Bates, in a statement to The Fact Checker, defended citing the statistic.

“Far from retracting their support for the ‘Limit, Save, Grow Act,’ House Republicans still tout that vote as representative of their agenda and principles,” he said. “The House GOP have also introduced even more legislation that would eliminate Border Patrol agents, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/09/19/by-the-numbers-impacts-of-house-republicans-extreme-cr-8-cuts/" target="_blank">including in September</a>. House Republicans continue to block the additional border security funding that President Biden has stressed the urgency of since August — the same month that a number of their colleagues <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2023/08/22/texas-republicans-who-denounced-defund-police-now-threaten-to-defund-homeland-security/__;!!M9LbjjnYNg9jBDflsQ!DzugE8R9HZn9OGw36jIOZ4n7uynQK_UNQ_7qosw_P9zWG3eCqpFWA801i6pSYuxrCX4VHu4JURDtWobtLlU4CbUx_yaJFY73Rg$" target="_blank">proposed</a> defunding the entire Department of Homeland Security. If they would like to now disown the ‘Limit, Save, Grow Act’ today, we’ll be the first to congratulate them on their reversal.”

It’s a classic Washington game to misleadingly cite a lawmaker’s past votes. The Republican primary debates have been a good example of that. But the White House is going too far here.

By harking back to last May’s vote that promised spending cuts with no specifics, the White House is ignoring a deal cut by the president and then a vote for an actual spending bill. White House officials suggest the original bill still represents House Republican aspirations. But the fact remains that the only vote that would direct how much money would be spent on border security was the September appropriations bill. Moreover, the 2,000-cut figure was an estimate generated by the White House.

Past votes can certainly be fair game and White House officials generally are careful to note they are referring to a vote that took place last May. But such nuances may be lost on Americans not conversant with the federal budget. House Republicans once may have backed a tough budget plan but they never cast a vote that specified they would cut 2,000 Border Patrol agents; instead, they have voted to increase the total by nearly 2,000. That’s spin worthy of Three Pinocchios.

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