In the wake of President Bush's proposal -- made official in a May 15 nationally televised speech -- to deploy as many as 6,000 National Guard members to the Mexican border to help the Border Patrol in preventing illegal immigration, and his plan to increase the number of Border Patrol agents by 6,000 by 2008, Congressional Quarterly unearthed a statement from December 2005 by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff rejecting out of hand the notion of deploying the National Guard to the border. Given CQ's reminder of May 15, Media Matters for America adds the following to our list of suggested questions for the White House press corps to ask recently hired White House press secretary Tony Snow:

Has Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff changed his view that “there's a smarter way” to handle illegal immigration than sending the National Guard to the southern border, which he has called “a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem”? Or, in making the proposal for enhanced border security, did President Bush simply ignore the views of his Homeland Security secretary?

As the weblog TPM Muckraker noted in a May 16 entry (crediting Congressional Quarterly's Patrick Yoest), on the December 15, 2005, edition of Fox News's The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asked Chertoff “Why don't you put the National Guard on the border to back up the Border Patrol?” to which Chertoff responded:

CHERTOFF: Well, the National Guard is really, first of all, not trained for that mission. I mean, the fact of the matter is the border is a special place. There are special challenges that are faced there.

[...]

CHERTOFF: But to really deploy across the border, you'd have to deploy an enormous number of people. You'd have to supply them at the border, and you'd have to give them the kind of training to deal with people who are crossing the border. You don't necessarily want to put --

O'REILLY: You don't think you can do that? I think the Guard could do that.

CHERTOFF: I think it would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem.

O'REILLY: But it's something.

CHERTOFF: I think there's a smarter way to do it. Well, it -- unless you would be prepared to leave those people in the National Guard day and night for month after month after month, you would eventually have to come to grips with the challenge in a more comprehensive way.

Has the President explained how his plan to add 6,000 Border Patrol agents squares with his 2005 budget cuts that scrapped plans for nearly 10,000 additional agents?

As American Prospect executive editor Michael Tomasky noted in a May 16 entry on the Prospect's weblog, TAPPED, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on February 9, 2005, that Bush's proposed 2006 budget stripped funding for a portion of the National Intelligence Reform Act -- which Bush had signed into law less than two months earlier -- calling for an additional 10,000 Border Patrol agents. According to the Chronicle, the 2006 budget proposed funding for only 210 new agents.

From the February 9 Chronicle:

The law signed by President Bush less than two months ago to add thousands of border patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border has crashed into the reality of Bush's austere federal budget proposal, officials said Tuesday.

Officially approved by Bush on Dec. 17 after extensive bickering in Congress, the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006. Roughly 80 percent of the agents were to patrol the southern U.S. border from Texas to California, along which thousands of people cross into the United States illegally every year.

But Bush's proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents.

The shrunken increase reflects the lack of money for an army of border guards and the capacity to train them, officials said.