LINCOLN- Following Gov. Pillen's announcement last week that sixty Nebraska National Guard servicemen would be deployed to the southern border of Texas, it was revealed that the state would be using around $2 million in federal Covid-19 recovery funds to pay for it. Pillen, along with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, agreed not to charge Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for the deployment, which is a rare occurrence for any state requesting aid through the multi-state disaster-response system, and instead decided to foot the bill with state funding.

Last month, taxpayer funding was utilized to send several Nebraska State Patrolmen to the U.S. southern border, which cost around $128,000. State Sen. Carol Blood, who previously ran against Pillen last year for the governorship, called on State Auditor Mike Foley to begin investigating how Nebraska is utilizing its pandemic relief funding, alleging that they might be used to play "shell games" for political purposes.

"I think of all the small businesses and workforce shortages and all the things we could spend this money on," said Blood, "Why would we tap these resources to help another state when we have all these people we could help in Nebraska?" Sen. Rob Clements, the Republican chair of the Legislature's Appropriations Committee, defended Pillen, arguing that the use of federal funding to cover a federal problem should not be controversial. "The state's total ARPA funding was more than $1 billion," said Clements, "Two million out of that is a very small number."

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