Key Democrat says negotiators making ‘progress’ in border wall talks

Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security chair Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on Thursday that negotiators have made progress in funding talks over the nation’s border wall, as lawmakers work quickly to hammer out sticking points in spending negotiations before a looming shutdown deadline next week.

Murphy, whose panel handles appropriations for barrier funds, told reporters on Thursday afternoon that wall funding remains “one of the outstanding issues” negotiators are continuing to sort out as they seek to complete work on a sprawling spending omnibus package for fiscal 2022 by a Mar. 11 deadline.

“We’ve made progress in the last 24 hours. We were stuck for a little while, but we’ve been trading some constructive paper in the last 24 hours … I’m hopeful that we will not be the sticking point,” said Murphy.

Last year, Democrats outlined plans to rescind nearly $2 billion in funding for the border wall that was previously allocated by Congress. President Biden also called for funding for the project to end in his budget request for fiscal 2022. 

In their funding proposals, Senate Democrats have pushed for the funds to be repurposed for border security technology, including IT modernization efforts, expanded train capacity for Customs and Border Protection personnel and environmental mitigation efforts.

However, Murphy signaled in recent remarks to reporters that negotiators are still hashing out the matter, calling it one of the tougher issues in spending talks.

“It is because you’ve got, you know, multi-year money left over from the Trump administration on the border wall. So, it is one of the outstanding issues, what we do with that money, but we’ve made progress on that,” he said on Thursday afternoon.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), ranking Republican on the subcommittee, has also said funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) remains a hurdle in bipartisan spending talks.

“How much detention beds, that’s always a bone of contention,” Capito told The Hill on Wednesday, while discussing challenges the subcommittee has faced in negotiations. 

Murphy wouldn’t provide further information on where talks stood on the matter when pressed by reporters on Thursday, however, though he added he thinks negotiators are “getting closer on everything.”

His panel is one of 12 Senate appropriation subcommittees working to finish their slices of a massive spending package to fund the government through the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.

Lawmakers have roughly a week until to pass the package under the current deadline, or risk passing another short-term stopgap bill — a measure Congress has had to resort to three times for the current fiscal year to avert a shutdown and buy time for negotiators to wrap up spending talks.

“I’m hopeful that we will not be the sticking point,” Murphy told reporters on Thursday.