Senate nixes border, Iron Dome funding

The US Senate voted down legislation that would fund $2.7 billion in appropriations for addressing the tens of thousands of migrant children flooding the US border.

US Senate legislation giving President Obama $2.7 billion to deal with tens of thousands of Central American migrant children amassing at the southwestern U.S. border was blocked on Thursday by Republican opposition.

By a vote of 50-44, 10 short of the 60 needed, the bill failed to clear a procedural hurdle. Republicans objected to the cost of the measure and complained that it would not be effective in discouraging rising illegal migration of children from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Earlier on Thursday, the House of Representatives failed to pass a $659 million funding bill that the White House had threatened to veto. House Republican leaders are trying to figure out a way to bring a border-security bill back to the chamber for passage. The Monitor's Francine Kiefer reports that many representatives blame Ted Cruz for interfering with the House vote.

The failure of the US Senate's border security funding bill also delayed at least until September $225 million in funding for Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system.

The Senate Appropriations Committee had included the funds for Israel's system in a bill that would have given Obama $2.7 billion to deal with an influx of tens of thousands of undocumented Central American children across the border with Mexico.

But the funding bill stalled until at least September when it failed to clear a procedural hurdle by a vote of 50-44, 10 short of the 60 needed. Republicans objected to the cost of the measure.