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Today, Congressman Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28) reacted to the President’s budget proposal, which takes $2.6 billion from needed programs to pay for a border wall:

“The President’s proposed budget would be a disaster for Texas, and for the country,” he said.

“He wants to take money from programs that Texans actually need, and use it to hire 20 new lawyers. Those lawyers’ entire jobs will be to take private property away from American landowners on the border, so the President can build his arbitrary border wall.

Here in Texas, we take the concept of private property very seriously. We take pride in our land, which has often been passed down for generations. And Texans stand up for ourselves when the federal government tries to take what is ours.

The wall will not make anyone safer. Homeland security experts agree that it will do more harm than good. Our border security is too important to sacrifice to a symbolic political gesture.

To pay for his expensive, ineffective side project, he wants to cut funding to our education, rural water infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, and support for agriculture. If Republicans force this budget through Congress, it will immediately hurt the people of my district. Ironically, the first to feel the pain of his decisions will be the border communities a wall would supposedly protect.”

Congressman Cuellar represents 280 miles of U.S.-Mexico border.

He serves on the Homeland Security and Defense subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee, and is a supporter of “law and order on the border.” He included a provision increasing funding for National Guard surveillance of the border in the FY17 Defense Appropriations bill, which recently passed the House of Representatives.