Committees are being established in Texas to determine whether federal covid funds can be used on border security.
SMU political scientist Cal Jillson says Texas Governor Greg Abbott planned to fund the border wall in Texas with contributions and then took $250 million from the prison system's budget. He says it was soon realized he was going to backfill the budget with federal funds. "And now what speaker (Dade) Phelan has done is ask a dozen committees of the Texas House to study how federal funds might be used for border security."
This includes but is not limited to the border wall. Jillson says the democratic majority in congress wanted to get a lot of money out fast to fight covid, so the rules on how that money could be used were very general. It is possible that that states could decide how to spend it themselves. "That's why Democratic members of congress were in Washington, meeting with Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, saying look, this isn't what you intended. Maybe the rules are looser than they need to be. They could be tightened up." They would like to see the federal money used for education and health care and not necessarily for border control and immigration issue.
Jillson notes Governor Abbott is up for re-election in 2022. He says Abbott has been "quite focused on the right flank of his Republican electorate to be sure he's seen as deeply conservative. That's why Trump and Abbott are going to the border and it's why Governor Abbott has said he will build a wall along the Texas/Mexico border to fulfill the former president's promise."
He notes a recent Texas Tribune/UT poll put the border and border security among the top two items on the minds of Texans.
