White House Budget Director Shalanda Young on Friday asked Congress to provide $4 billion to, among other things, rebuild the collapsed bridge in Baltimore and advocated for increased resources on the border with Mexico.
“Congress has yet to respond to the additional urgent requests the President made last October that would strengthen border security and address urgent national needs,” Shalanda Young wrote in a letter to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.
In April, after months of extremely tense negotiations, the US Congress adopted a $95 billion aid plan, which included a gigantic package of military and economic assistance for Ukraine.
“I am writing today to reiterate the October request and submit revised estimates for an additional $4 billion,” the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said in the letter.
It includes rebuilding the bridge that collapsed in March after being hit by a container ship at the entrance to the port of Baltimore in Maryland, repairs in Hawaii after wildfires ravaged the island of Maui last summer, and assistance after tornadoes in the Midwest.
In addition to the $4 billion, Shalanda Young called on Congress to support the bipartisan “border security” deal, which would “provide significant policy changes, resources and personnel needed to secure U.S. Borders and Fixing the Broken Immigration System.”
The White House accuses Republicans of blocking any immigration reform in Congress, at the request of Donald Trump. The US Senate rejected a bill at the end of May aimed at strengthening controls at the southern border with Mexico after an initial failure in February.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who helped negotiate the bill, said the Democrats’ decision to put it back on the ballot was nothing more than a “scam” before the election.
The White House budget director finally urged congressional representatives to act on the “precarious state of the sector” of early childhood, and insisted on “the need to reduce child care costs for working families.”
