"This administration and this Congress have been systematically cutting funding to border security since the Democrats took control."
Mike Pence on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 in an interview on NBC's 'Meet the Press'

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Mike Pence is a Republican Congressman from Indiana.

"Here's the numbers," Pence said. "Fiscal 2007, the last year Republicans wrote a budget, $1.2 billion for border security and fencing. By 2010 that was cut to $800 million ... I mean, the Democrats have cut three-quarters of a trillion out of this,
and the president wants to go to 50 percent of the level that Republicans spent on border security. We have got to take border security seriously."

Pence toggles between two statistics here, spending on border security and a subset of that, spending on border fencing.

The fact is, between 2007 and now, while spending on border fencing has gone down, overall spending on border security has increased.

Now for the REAL numbers.

In 2007, discretionary spending on border security was $6.3 billion. As Pence noted, that was the last year of full Republican control. After that, while George W. Bush remained in the presidency, Congress was controlled by Democrats. But discretionary spending on border security continued to rise year after year. It went to $7.9 billion in 2008; to $9.8 billion in 2009; and to $10.1 billion in fiscal year 2010. President Barack Obama's proposed 2011 budget calls for a slight decrease in discretionary spending on border security, but even at the proposed level of $9.8 billion, that's a 55 percent increase between 2007 and 2011.

Pence said "this administration and this Congress have been systematically cutting funding to border security since the Democrats took control," that's wrong. Funding for fencing is down, but funding for border security is up. In fact, discretionary spending on border security is up 55 percent between 2007 and 2011, even with a small proposed cut in 2011.


So Mike Pence --- Are you Kidding?