When President Bush recently announced in his address to the nation his immediate plans for immigration reform, he didn't mention how the proposals would be paid for. A few days later, on May 18, he officially requested $1.9 billion from Congress to spend on his border security initiative. Congress will likely approve the president's request as part of the delayed Fiscal year 2006 Supplemental Appropriations bill currently in conference between the House and Senate. Among the five objectives of Bush's immigration reform plan is securing the border with Mexico. The president has broken down the funding for his proposals into two main parts: 1) $1.172 billion to be spent by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and 2) $756 million to be spent on activating some 6,000 National Guardsmen to patrol the southern border. The DHS portion is further divided among several areas including customs and border protection, and immigration and customs enforcement. Prior to his border security funding request, Bush threatened to veto the supplement bill if it came in above $94.5 billion - a ceiling that has brought negotiations between the Senate and House to an impasse. While the House version of the supplemental aligns closely to the president's original request, the Senate version added over $14 billion in additional funding, bringing its total to $109 billion. Rather than increasing this limit by the $1.9 billion cost of his border security measure, Bush is sticking to the veto threat and the original $94.5 billion cap. In order to meet this goal, the Office of Management and Budget and the Pentagon have prescribed specific military line items to cut from the supplemental. These cuts to military spending would include reconstruction projects for Afghanistan and Iraq and various weapons projects and other military hardware spending. Funding for these proposals will almost certainly be added back into the next supplemental bill or to the forthcoming regular Defense appropriations bill - thereby making the president's threats to hold the line on spending rather pointless. While the president's border initiative is debatable in its own rite, the method he's chosen to fund it is troubling but not atypical of an administration known for power grabbing. By its inclusion in the emergency spending bill currently being debated in Congress, the proposal and the funds requested for it are removed from the regular congressional oversight processes. The funds are also removed from budget enforcement mechanisms, and ultimately dissent is stifled, because in order to do so lawmakers would be forced to cast a politically difficult vote against military funding during a war. In addition, while the $1.9 billion price tag is small compared to the overall cost of the supplemental bill, the president's request has complicated and further delayed negotiations taking place between the Senate and the House over their respective versions. Indeed, one Senate aide partially attributed the current delays to Bush's request saying "[the border security request] pushed us beyond the brink." The House and Senate will resume negotiations on the spending package when Congress returns to work after the week-long Memorial Day recess.