DinoR’s post is an excellent summation of facts, but I think people are mostly responding to the title of the OP rather than the text.
Why wasn’t there money for a wall before? Because Congress didn’t really want one, and realized it was bad politics and didn’t want to fight for it. The answer is mostly political although the answer to the question here doesn’t have to be politically charged. Acknowledging the existence of political considerations doesn’t necessarily mean politically charged.
Do Trump’s supporters ever ask why their hero waited two years to threaten shutdowns and emergency declarations to get wall funding? Are they satisfied by answers like “Congress didn’t really want one, and realized it was bad politics”? Are they aware their party controlled both houses of Congress?
I know that sounds snarky, but I really want to know. Because if I voted for Trump and wanted a wall, I’d be pissed off that nothing happened in 2017-18.
The GOP didn’t really control both houses, though. The Senate slim majority was not enough to overcome the filibuster on any bill that most Senate Democrats objected to. Trump has called several times for nuking the legislative filibuster when he couldn’t get what he wanted through Congress. McConnell has consistently said he didn’t have the votes to do it. From GOP Senators that made public statements against changing the rules in December, he certainly didn’t have the votes to do it in December in order to get wall money on a simple majority vote.
Aside from the limited budget reconciliation process loophole, getting a bill through the Senate took bipartisan support. The once annually budget reconciliation got used on an attempt to repeal ACA and tax cuts for FY17 and FY18. There was a chance to try and use it for FY19 that started on October 1st. Without a budget that’s not a great tool. The Senate parlimentarian may well have balked at reconciling a budget that didn’t exist yet. Even more importantly that DHS budget was still in play. That means the wall money would also have still been in play as an issue during the appropriations process. Congress can take away what they’ve previously given.
The GOP controlled Senate committees as the majority party. They controlled the agenda, within Senate rules, through holding the Majority Leader post. They didn’t have control for legislating though.
One potential reason is that Trump didn’t want to challenge the Republican legislature but wait till the midterms, so if the Dem’s took it he could fight them, if the Repub’s held he could take credit and push for his wall under the great leadership of Trump who got them (re)elected.
I honestly don’t know the answer to those questions. Certainly, some of them accept that answer, and some of them know the specific details.
I have found it difficult to have meaningful discussions with most Trump supporters. We don’t agree on enough basic facts to get very far. The ones that I can most easily understand are the ones who think he’s a useful idiot. They wanted him for the tax cuts and deregulation (I’m vastly simplifying here, of course), and the probably don’t care that much about the wall. They probably would agree with my analysis, and it wouldn’t bother them.
Some of them, not so much. Ann Coulter was a big Trump supporter and seems to have turned on him over this issue.
Excellent explanation. However, you can’t deny the GOP was *closer *to being able to pass wall-funding legislation in 2017-18 than they are today. Yet when he might have only needed a vote or two more in the Senate, Trump didn’t pull any stunts to pressure Congress. It’s only now, when he has zero chance of getting the wall funded, that he’s making a stink.
To reiterate my point as a question – If I had voted for Trump and wanted a wall, shouldn’t I be pissed off at how this has transpired?
Pretty sure this it the right answer.
But not until Dems won the House. Hmmm …
It would have taken more Democrats to support than that. Unless the Republicans in the Senate wanted the wall more than they wanted to repeal ACA or get tax cuts. Both of those were Trump campaign priorities too so it’s not like it was that hard to talk him into what the GOP in Congress actually wanted.
I still dispute the notion that he picked the fight because the House now has a Democratic majority. He was tweeting about a potential veto of the 2018 budget but got talked into signing. The budget process for this year was in full swing before the midterms were even held. Trump had that meeting with Schumer and Pelosi where he saidd he’d own the shutdown with Republicans still the majority in both Houses. He refused to sign a continuing resolution presented by a Congress with GOP majorities in both houses. If he really was playing at the game you think he was why not sign that? It would have kicked the can until there actually was a Democratic majority in the House to try and blame. He forced a shutdown under a GOP dominated Congress.
For those that aren’t aware the GOP didn’t fully control the Senate, I’d say ignorance is anger not bliss. 
They could also be pissed about the big chunk of Republicans that aren’t really into building his wall. I’d still say they probably shouldn’t be pissed at anyone but Trump. It was politically very difficult, if not infeasible, to get the wall with the Congress Trump had. Feelings aren’t rational, though. We all get varying levels of angry at times when we’re faced with not getting something we want. That’s true even if what we wanted was mostly a pipe dream.
I mean, there are more R Senators today than there were then, so it’s not even clear that he was closer then. Obviously, the House is no longer controlled so it’s a mixed bag. Given the way the country is divided and most legislative seats are safe for the party but not always the candidate, I’m not sure that he was in any way meaningfully close to getting it. Giving in on something as contentious along party lines as this issue is kind of a death wish for a careerist. Even assuming that every Senator is as craven as can be, what are you going to promise to a Senator that’s going to make them ok with getting primaried out of office in a few years? And remember that you’re Trump, whose promises are worth the paper they’re wiped off with.
Depends on how reasonable you are? From a Bayesian analysis, if you voted for Trump and wanted a wall, I’d guess “not very”, but setting that political snipe aside, Trump seems to have done what is in his power to accomplish that goal. The President isn’t a king, and since we know Trump is an expert negotiator, maybe this was just one of those deals that couldn’t happen. Maybe the wall was just a metaphor all along?
I will not claim to know Ann Coulter’s mind. That way lies madness 
You’re both clearly better informed on Capital Hill maneuverings than I am, so I’ll concede the point. Trump didn’t get the wall built in 2017-18, despite GOP majorities in both houses of Congress, because there was never sufficient support in his own party to overcome unanimous Democratic opposition.
But it sure still looks like he and the party played a pretty good game of kicking the outrage down the road until there was a Democratic-controlled House to focus it upon. Where was the anger (from Trump and/or his supporters) in 2017-18 at GOP congresspeople who didn’t support the wall? Why no primary threats against them?
(Yes, I know the recent shutdown started while the GOP controlled both houses, but it was a lame duck Congress. That’s why Pelosi and Schumer were in the room to begin with.)
Net result: no noise about the wall not getting built until Fox News can blame it all on Democrats. Maybe there’s something to this 4D chess thing after all.
Well, some of them did. Jeff Flake is a notable case. He was very moderate on immigration, about as opposed to Trump as anyone in the GOP was (rhetorically at least), and Trump vented his spleen on twitter and Flake announced he was retiring. He didn’t actually get primaried, but he saw the writing on the wall that he would have and wouldn’t win.
Part of is that it’s hard to pin a primary threat on a legislator who never voted for or against a thing.
Legislatures rarely take votes on things unless
Due to the way the Senate filibuster works, the Senate explicitly doesn’t take votes on things that a significant minority doesn’t want to pass.
And probably most of the GOP legislators didn’t really not support a wall, they just didn’t support it very strongly. They didn’t think it was worth the fight or the money or the political capital. And they’re probably right, given the way things turned out. The funding didn’t happen because the Democrats could not be swayed, and they could not be swayed because the general populace isn’t really in favor of it, and they’re not in favor (this might be wishful thinking) because at its heart it’s kind of a dumb idea.
Like, even if you really believe that illegal immigration is a major problem, and that we need to spend a lot more money restricting it. Even if you’re all-in on nationalism and protecting the border and keeping Mexicans from taking our jobs… more physical barriers are mostly not a very good solution to that problem.
Agreed. So why doesn’t someone in the GOP tell Trump to stfu about it?
Because even though they know it’s a bad idea, they find it useful for casting Democrats as obstructionist and soft on illegal immigrants.
There was lots of noise. Apparently you missed it.
I can’t find a cite in the great mass of the internet dedicated to more recent mentions of a wall. Back during the campaign there was a rally where Trump appeared to back away from the wall. IIRC it made it sound like more of an option to be considered rather than a solution. His base went nuts; IIRC Coulter did too. He “clarified” and the wall chants at rallies continued unabated.
When he didn’t get his wall money in the FY17 budget, Ann Coulter lost her shit.
The he signed the FY18 budget after initially threatening to veto it on twitter. Ann Coulter lost her shit. Trump promised to never sign another budget without wall money at the time. At the time I generally saw comments from his base that were unhappy. There was a mix of rationalizing it as being okay since another Trump priority, increased defense spending, was included.
Having made the promise to veto any DHS budget without wall money, Trump then spent last summer stoking illegal immigration and other border security concerns in the lead up to the midterms. The wall featured prominently as one of the centerpieces of his platform. Congress got 75% of departmental appropriations bills done before the recess for midterm campaigning. Some of them even got done on time :eek: - before the 1 October start of the fiscal year. (It’s common for the appropriations process to drag into the first quarter even when it’s not a wildly contentious game of shutdown chicken.) DHS’s budget with the controversial wall funding got pushed to later before anyone even knew the election results. So there’s a whole background of build up to the final confrontation. It includes a trend of unhappiness with not getting a wall among his base, bringing immigration and the wall to the fore right before the budgetary process, and a promise to not sign another budget without wall money. All of that pressure was in place before the midterm elections.
Even with all that Trump almost blinked. Faced with signing a continuing resolution funding the government until 8 Feb. to avoid a shutdown he initially was supportive. It wasn’t even the final appropriations bill just a CR to keep negotiating without a shutdown. Then ovvernight he watched Ann Coulter, and big chunks of his base, lose their shit. That story has an illuminating tweet from Trump:
About a week ago he got a little bit of his already reduced demand for wall money in the compromise bill and declared a national emergency to try and build more. Guess who lost her shit?
Ann Coulter: “The Only National Emergency Is That Our President Is An Idiot”
Trump was largely backed into a corner by his base. They wanted wall funding not a third iteration of “we’ll get 'em next year.” While the window dressing was different because of the House swing, IMO the fight was coming anyway. Trump promised a veto unless he got something unrealistic through the Senate. The Senate didn’t deliver. Trump reaffirmed his veto promise and 25% of the government shutdown. The 2019 appropriations process was likely to be fugly no matter who controlled the House, IMO.
Thank you for the long, detailed and well-researched rebuttal to my increasingly tenuous argument. I’ve never had a kind thing to say about Ann Coulter, but I will give her credit for being ideologically consistent.