Democrats are supposedly offering 1.3 billion dollars for a border fence and Trump wants five billion. Trump thinks five billion will get what needs to be done done. The difference of 3.7 billion as we have said is relative pocket change. No, it is barely pocket lint in the scope of the federal budget . Certainly fiscal responsibility has nothing to do with it on the Democrat’s part. The only reason to oppose such a fiscally meaningless amount is that the Democrats believe it will work — to the detriment of their party building efforts.
Here is an excellent recitation of the why behind Democrat turnabout as regards immigration and their perfidy towards blue collar workers. The citations are reliable because it is produced by Prager U
It looks like the pathetically led Congress (one-half soon to be criminally led) will just resort to another continuing resolution to avoid the media optics of a government shut down over Christmas. How quaint a concern as if “government” would be working anyway or as if a shut down would affect more than a fraction of operations.
OH MY GOD furlough some workers for some time until a critical situation is resolved, as if government workers are entitled to continuous employment no matter what. As if small and large business do not layoff workers in response to critical situations, finance interruptions and seasonally. Those workers often take an economic hit but during what shutdown have federal government workers actually lost any pay? Congress will dependably vote to pay them for their time off.
However, according to WaPo and others Trump is signalling a shut down will not be his vehicle after all to apply the political pressure to get the wall built. That he will find other ways to get it done. That to the relief of Congress which wants to shut down their operations with pay. Of course they call it recess, which is another word for paid vacation and play-time.
We would be content with realigning the Pentagon budget to build the wall as border security is a national defense issue anyway.
Here is an article (excerpt from the publication 538) as to why Trump we hope will not take Democrat maneuverings that offer some wall money for the price of many more BILLIONS every year in taxpayer largess to illegal immigrants (and of course Democrat Party building efforts). It maintains that to Trump the wall is of less significance than what he would have to agree to to get money for it out of the Democrats. We are not sure of the politics of the analysis and that given the amount of money Trump should be able to have it both ways. Go to the mats or build the wall with other sources and take away that supposed Democrat chip. Build it and tell them to pound sand. R Mall
Why Trump isn’t taking Democrats offer for a wall
First, it’s not clear that Trump will face a backlash if the wall isn’t built. Some Trump allies have said that his supporters took the candidate’s rhetoric about the wall and other issues during the 2016 campaign “seriously, but not literally.” Indeed, in interviews with Republican voters, I’ve found that many interpreted Trump’s push for a border wall more as a pledge that he would take conservative stands on immigration than as a promise for the creation of a Great Wall of China-style structure.
Some polls show that Trump voters did expect a real wall, but here’s what’s even clearer: Among Republicans, Trump is more popular than the wall. Trump is edging close to a 90 percent approval rating from members of his party in some surveys. In contrast, support for the wall among Republicans is often in the high 60s and 70s, with about a quarter of Republicans opposing it.
Second, Trump could face a backlash if he were to sign a bill granting citizenship to a large group of undocumented immigrants. Important forces in the Republican Party — many in the anti-establishment wing — are strongly opposed to the DACA citizenship proposals, including political groups like Heritage Action, media figures at outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart, deeply conservative members of Congress like Sen. Ted Cruz and conservative activists such as Corey Stewart, who served a stint as a co-chair of Trump’s 2016 campaign in Virginia.
