The Wall

Donald Trump wants a multi-billion dollar wall on the southern border of the US. He says he needs Democratic help. Why?

The Republican party controls both houses of Congress and the White House. Of 100 senators, 54 are Republican. Of 435 representatives, 246 are Republican. The 114th Congress has the largest Republican majority since the 71st Congress of 1929—1931. If Trump wants to fund a border wall, why doesn’t he ask his own party for funding instead of blaming Democrats for not cooperating with him?

Trump has done plenty of things Democrats opposed. The Congress has been essentially a rubber stamp on anything he wanted. Trump got things his way. Then Trump hit a wall.

It was a wall of Democrats united to put the brakes on his multi-billion dollar boondoggle. Trump wanted $1.4 billion to start construction. Democrats gave him $1.5 billion for upgrades to border security, but no money for a wall.

Trump said he will “proudly” shut down the federal government unless Democrats help him pay for the border wall. He will proudly stop paychecks to hundreds of thousands of federal workers, proudly close national parks, and proudly suspend many government functions. Considering that Congress and the White House are controlled by Republicans, why do they need Democratic votes? It would seem they could pass any bill they want to pass.

But they can’t and it’s because of something called the “Cloture Rule”. It only takes 51 votes to pass a bill in the Senate but it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, and Republicans don’t have 60 votes.

When Trump was campaigning, he assured his supporters again and again that Mexico will pay for the wall. When Mexico made it clear that they would not be forking over billions of dollars for Trump’s wall, the funding situation became murkier. Trump changed his message to: American taxpayers will pay for the wall and Mexico will reimburse us “in some form” at “a later date.” But Mexican government officials have stated repeatedly that they will not pay for any part of Trump’s border wall. So if the wall is built, who will be on the hook for the bill?

At the end of the day it will be the same people who are always on the hook for billion dollar boondoggles—American taxpayers. Or more likely, the wall will be paid for by the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of today’s taxpayers.

Even more likely than that is the probability that the bill for the wall will never be paid. The bill will simply be added to America’s credit card, otherwise known as the National Debt, and taxpayers will pay interest on that bill forever, never paying it off. And that is what lenders really care about. They don’t want the debt to be repaid. They want to earn interest indefinitely. And for some reason, voters seem happy to let them do that.