House Passes $45B Homeland Security Spending Bill

The House of Representatives passed a $39 billion Department of Homeland Security spending bill for next fiscal year that would boost its funding by nearly $1 billion.

The measure passed on a 245-182 vote. The new fiscal year starts on October 1.

The measure boosts funding for Border Patrol agents and restores cuts sought by Obama to a popular program that gives first responder grants to local governments. The bill funds a variety of homeland security functions, including the Transportation Security Administration, the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, immigration enforcement, and disaster prevention and recovery.

The vote sent the measure to the Senate, which was likely to unveil a modestly more generous version later this month, said Reuters.According to Reuters, the White House has promised to veto the bill because it claims that it’s part of a broader GOP strategy that embraces deep spending cuts and shifts scarce resources from domestic programs to the Pentagon.

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