Filemon Vela (TX-34) was joined by faith leaders from United Methodist Church, environmental advocates from Earthjustice and families affected by wall construction to urge Congress to protect sacred sites across the Southern border from Trump’s border wall. Because a wall is what Trump promised, and a wall is what he’s going to claim to build.WASHINGTON, DC – Yesterday, Rep. If the Trump administration simply admitted that the things it wants to build on the border in the next year aren’t a wall, it might find less resistance from Congress. Many congressional Republicans, for their part, don’t want to throw billions of dollars at something so expensive and untested as a “border wall” - and that antipathy is making them resistant even to funding a few dozen miles of fencing. But because the Trump administration is trying to use them to fill the president’s best-known campaign promise, they’re getting labeled a “wall” - and Democrats have no desire to help Trump build his wall. The things the Trump administration is actually proposing to build, in the short term, are pretty modest - they’re proposals that Democrats would have supported 10 years ago, and that, in some cases, even border communities themselves are okay with. But it’s an effective troll because it hits on the difficulty that both Democrats and Republicans face when it comes to the wall. How Donald Trump could actually build the wall - and who would pay the price The Trump administration has already started building the border wall But it is allowing him to make a point about how Trump isn’t keeping his promises. Vela’s amendment, below, has no hope of getting added to the bill the Homeland Security Committee’s considering. He ran on building a wall, and making the Mexican government pay for it. The bill marked up in the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday would put $10 billion toward “tactical infrastructure” (including a “border wall system) and would give the government more legal authority to take private land for the wall - instead of getting tied up in lawsuits from landowners that can take a decade or more to resolve.īut fencing and levee walls, or even a “border wall system,” aren’t what President Trump ran on in 2016. But Republicans in the House of Representatives are trying to give the administration even more. The administration keeps asking (so far unsuccessfully) for an extra few billion dollars to build a few dozen miles of fencing and levee walls. The government’s chosen a handful of contractors to build prototypes, which are currently being erected near San Diego. The Trump administration is definitely moving forward with a plan to build more physical barriers on the border. The House Homeland Security Committee is debating a bill to give Trump more money and authority to build a “border wall system” Vela wants to add an amendment that would define the “wall” according to the president’s own promises - including saying that it’s only a wall if Mexico pays for it. Filemon Vela (D-TX) is trying to hold the president and Republicans to that promise. Trump promised that he would build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. From another perspective, it’s an enormous joke that even the Trump administration doesn’t believe anymore. From one perspective, President Donald Trump’s famous wall on the US-Mexico border is actually turning into a serious, steady policy effort.
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