1,700 Border Patrol Agents Assigned. Dec. 7, 2005, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff announced the fiscal year 2006 U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol agent deployment schedule. An additional 1,700 CBP Border Patrol agents will be assigned to the southwest border as follows: Arizona, 643 agents, Texas, 452 agents, California, 352 agents, and New Mexico, 253 agents.
Let me review it for you. In December of 2004, the Congress passed the 911 Security Bill which, against the objections of the President who also opposed the RealID Act provisions, included authorization for 10,000 new Border Patrol Agents to be added in increments of 2000 per year starting in 2006. After initially fighting these provisions Bush eventually saw that they could not be defeated and eventually praised them after he got the RealID Act stripped out. That also had to be shoved down his unwilling throat a couple of months later.
But, less than 2 months later he submitted a proposed budget requesting only 210.
This really pissed off the Congress and they passed a budget which restored the number back to 2000.
In about May of 2005, as part of the Iraq War Supplemental Funding Bill, again against the objections of the President, Robert Byrd got funding for about 700 of the 1700 Border Patrol Agents you are citing as a Bush accomplishment. Byrd's Amendment passed with unanimous support from every single Democrat Senator and a few Republican conservatives.
In October of 2005, funding for the remaining 1000 of the 1700 Border Patrol Agents was passed. This was 300 short of the 2000 authorized and budgeted by Congress a few months earlier but 1500 greater than the number requested by the Whitehouse which spent much of the summer whining about how it did not have the capacity to train that many agents.
I believe I have a reasonable understanding of the appropriations process in theory and an excellent understanding of how it worked with respect to expanding the Border Patrol last year. You on the other hand are trying to give the President credit for an accomplishment that he obstructed every step of the way. It is as ridiculous as giving President Clinton credit for welfare reform after he vetoed it three times.