Border Wall Funding

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) is continuing to insist—brag, really—that there aren’t the votes in the House or the Senate for funding for a border wall.  Presently, he’s focused on the Senate:

Schumer maintained that Trump does not have the votes for a wall, at least in the Senate.

Schumer’s prior remarks might have been right about the House; the Republican caucus there has been as unfocused and undisciplined and dither-ridden as they’ve been for the last several years regarding border security.  Thursday, though, President Donald Trump injected some backbone into the caucus and sharpened its focus: he told Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and other Republicans present in a mid-day meeting—in no uncertain terms—that he would veto the CR that the Senate had so cravenly passed because it had no border wall money in it.  Thursday evening, the House responded, passing 217-185 (with 8 Republicans voting with the Progressive-Democrats) an amended CR with $5.7 billion in it for a border wall.  That bill has been passed to the Senate.

However, the reason President Donald Trump doesn’t have the votes in the Senate is because Schumer actively, proudly, blocks such a thing, even as he claims the Republicans control the Senate—as though in his fantasy world 60 is less than 51 (or next year, 53).  Of course, Schumer knows better, he’s just proud of his obstructionism.  He’s also proud of his hypocrisy, having supported several more billions of dollars than just five for a border wall—the 2006 Secure Fence Act, for instance—and as recently as last January, after which he welched on an agreement that involved solutions for 1.8 million DACA people (more than the 800 thousand for whom Progressive-Democrats had been seeking help) along with a parallel $25 billion for the wall.

Prepare to greet the Schumer Shutdown redux.

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