Washington, D.C. — Yesterday, the Senate released the details of its national security and foreign aid budget supplemental proposal. Following the release, Patrick Gaspard, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, issued the following statement:
We are in a moment of impossibly hard policy choices. The reality of a divided government means that any solution will be an imperfect compromise. But President Joe Biden is taking this moment to lead through difficulty.
There is indeed a humanitarian and administrative immigration crisis both at the border and in cities thousands of miles away. This didn’t happen overnight, but it is the result of years of inadequate funding; an asylum process that’s not fit for purpose; and a generation of political gamesmanship that wasted opportunities to fix the system. Now is the time to take steps. The fact that border security has become entangled with aid to Ukraine’s resistance to Putin means that this bill is of the highest order of security—and, while some provisions undermine delivery of aid in Gaza, millions worldwide depend on the humanitarian assistance it would fund. There’s no doubt the bill before the Senate is flawed, but we can and should build on it to enhance protections for those most in need.
Related Resources:
“To Resolve the Humanitarian and Administrative Border Crisis, the U.S. Must Fix the Broken Asylum System, Help Stabilize the Western Hemisphere, and Provide Robust, Orderly Migration Pathways” by Patrick Gaspard, Debu Gandhi, and Dan Restrepo
“Congress Must Provide Funding and Protect Oversight To Meet Global Security and Humanitarian Needs” by Patrick Gaspard and Allison McManus
For more information or to speak to an expert, contact Julia Cusick at [email protected].