President Joe Biden’s nominee to become ambassador to Jordan says she supports American taxpayers funding border security measures in the Middle Eastern country even as the White House has abandoned building a border wall along the United States-Mexico border.
Yael Lempert testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, telling Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) that she fully supports Biden’s funding requests that pump millions more in taxpayer dollars to fund border security initiatives in Jordan.
“I do support that request,” Lempert said, also telling Hagerty that she “would have to defer to the Jordanians whether they think” building a border wall “would be useful.”
Specifically, Biden has requested some $110 million in taxpayer money to continue funding border security measures for Jordan. In December 2022, Congress passed Biden’s request for $410 million for “enhanced border security” efforts in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman.
“The omnibus last year provides at least $150 million for border security in Jordan,” Hagerty noted. “That’s a large amount of taxpayer dollars. And if you think about the purpose of this, it’s to provide physical security to keep people from illegally crossing to Jordan.”
In prior years, such as 2019, Americans continuously were forced to fund millions in border security measures in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.
“I would think that if the funding request that has been put in place for the coming year is the size it is, there must be a belief that this sort of funding is important and that this sort of physical security is effective, isn’t that correct?” Hagerty asked Lempert.
“In the Jordanian context, I do believe that that is correct, Senator,” she responded.
“You’ve been very clear to talk about that in the Jordanian context, I just think it’s an important lesson for us to learn as Americans that we’re spending United States taxpayer dollars to support border security in a country that we’re trying to build stronger relations with,” Hagert said. “I think we ought to be learning a lesson ourselves because there’s not a penny in the President’s budget to support our own border security here.”
Lempert’s testimony comes as the U.S.-Mexico border is set to be overrun with hundreds of thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens every month when the Biden administration ends the public health authority known as Title 42.
At the same time, the Biden administration is focused exclusively on closing some gaps in the existing border wall which stretches only about 450 miles across the nearly 2,000-mile long border. Extra mileage for border wall, though, has not been built since Biden took office.
Related: Holes in U.S.-Mexico Border Wall Remain Open:
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John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
