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 must still respond to additional urgent requests made by the President last October that would strengthen border security and address urgent national needs,” wrote Shalanda Young in a letter sent to Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, 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 of an additional $4 billion,” the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said in this letter.
It notably reports the reconstruction of the bridge which collapsed in March after being hit by a container ship at the entrance to the port of Baltimore in Maryland, repairs in Hawaii after the fires which ravaged the island of Maui last summer, or 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.
The leader of the Republicans in the Senate Mitch McConnell, who had nevertheless helped negotiate the text, had estimated that the Democrats’ decision to submit it again to the vote was nothing other than a “scheme” before the elections.
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.”