This is in GQ because I’m looking for a GQ answer.
Why didn’t the president propose a bill for the border wall during his first 2 years in office, when he had a Republican House & Senate? Or did he? Or did it take 2 years to plan?
Is there a non-politically-charged answer to this?
Much of it is because there’s not uniform support for it among Republican members of Congress themselves and they could not present a unified front for it.
There are a variety of reasons for the lack of support, including distaste for eminent domain seizure of property, belief there are better uses for the funds, and for some, a pro-business argument for access to a less expensive labor pool.
That can be currently seen by the many Republicans, particularly from border states, whether in Congress, in state legislatures, or local officials, voicing their opposition.
But does any of this answer the question “Why didn’t the president propose…”?
That’s going to be tough, because the reality of the situation is politically-charged.
It simply wasn’t a high priority for the Republicans in power, and they knew it would be bad politics to push it. The legislative agenda for the GOP before the midterms was securing tax cuts for the wealthy.
Immigration didn’t become a big priority until the GOP needed a boogeyman in the midterms. After their defeat, I think most were happy to let it go until right-wing pundits started attacking Trump. He now seems to see it as his best chance to “rally his base.”
I apologize if that sounds biased, but, having paid pretty close attention, I’m also pretty confident it’s basically true. “The Wall” isn’t a real goal at this point; it’s just a political cudgel.
Congressional Republicans didn’t push for it in negotiations because there wasn’t a consensus for it in their own caucus, and Trump’s congressional negotiators didn’t push for it either. Trump discovered that just because the president wants something doesn’t mean it gets done–a lesson learned by Obama when Geithner failed to break up the big banks, and W. Bush when Cheney managed to get Congress to approve tax cuts Bush didn’t want.
I don’t think there are any non-political answers to this question, because “The Wall” has been political posturing from day one.
In the case of the Senate, with only a very few exceptions (most notably the failed ACA “skinny repeal” vote), Mitch McConnell doesn’t let bills get to the Senate floor that he doesn’t think will pass, and that doesn’t support Trump’s agenda. I don’t like McConnell, I think he’s chosen strategies that serve his party and his job security, rather than the country as a whole, but he’s politically savvy in this way.
The “why” of this is basically political, so let’s move this to GD. A strictly GQ answer is not possible.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Trump blames Paul Ryan who I guess had encouraged him to wait.
JMESO, but I think there is a better than even chance that our President didn’t push hard for his wall until there was a Democratic majority in the House upon whom he could blame the shut down he used as leverage to get the funding.
For FY17 Congress delayed full budgeting until after the new president was sworn in to give the winner input into the process. (The fiscal year starts on October 1st.) Trump’s budget proposal was pretty late even given the delay but included proposed spending for the wall. Congress mostly ignored his suite of major proposed budgetary changes.
For Fy18 Trump requested money for the wall. He didn’t get it and made noise about vetoing the omnibus appropriations bill that got dropped on his desk without wall funding. He got talked into signing to avoid a shutdown.
FY19 was Trump’s third attempt at getting wall money in the budget. That budget proposal and process started before the November election. Remember the new fiscal year began about five weeks before the election even happened. We’ve seen that play out in gruesome detail.
Trump has been trying. He asked for wall money three times. Congress is pretty good at treating presidential budget requests as scrap paper for their grandkids to draw on.
That’s my thinking on it too, but I was wondering if there was a more factual answer.
The latest round of budgetary chicken, and even the shutdown, started before there was a Democratic majority in the House, though. The shutdown started Dec 22nd and the new Congress wasn’t sworn in until Jan 3rd.
The factual answer would lie in the sober assessment of the total cost in construction and maintanence and the expected efficacy of the project and resulting reservations shared by the Conservative party.
I could cite those expert opinions made available, but seriously. I have yet to see one sober assessment this is cost effective. It is not really anyone else’s job to provide evidence something won’t work.
He or anyone else who likes it has the burden to show why it will.
The other fact is, of the 3 billion appropriated for the border in 2017 and 2018, less then 10% of it has been spent at all. That was money the Donny could have used for his wall, but didn’t. He did however, promise about 60% of that total amount to various contractors to build the wall, but hasn’t paid them either.
Why even ask for more, if you can’t do anything with what you already have?
This may be, but then why did McConnell come out in support of Trump’s declaring a national emergency?
Because Trump and/or the Russians own his balls just like Lindsay Graham
My understanding is that he did so as a deal with Trump, in exchange for Trump’s assurance that he would, in fact, sign the spending bill to end the shutdown.
Somebody actually described it as McConnell eating a manure sandwich
Is no one going to respond to DinoR’s position that, in fact, trump has consistently requested wall funds each year? Not going to convince me of the reasonableness of the request, but a consistently gradually ratcheted up position seems a little less like mere political opportunism.