McAuliffe, a Democrat and the party’s former chairman, said he urged fellow governors during this weekend’s National Governors Association summit to call members of their state’s congressional delegation and lobby them to fund the Department of Homeland Security this week. The agency’s funding runs out Friday and governors will lose matching federal grants that help fund state and local law enforcement and emergency services agenciesthat revelation, McAuliffe said, was “eye-opening.”
Mississippi’s Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has already phoned his state’s members of Congress — all but one are Republicans — to press them to fund the Department of Homeland Security without a touching President Barack Obama’s controversial executive action on immigration, McAuliffe said.
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But even if they don’t, McAuliffe said he hopes governors will take action to get the agency funded.
“What’s more important to me — letters are letters. Go back and what I kept stressing this weekend is talk to your members of Congress,” McAuliffe said.
