Posted on 01/03/2019 7:45:35 AM PST by Kaslin
This is not our first partial government shutdown. Somehow, someway, from 1976 through 2017, the nation has survived 18 shutdowns, the longest lasting 21 days. In this case, President Donald Trump insists that the next budget deal contain $5 billion to construct a wall on part of our southern border with Mexico.
Trump, say the Democrats, is "unwilling to compromise." But when he asks for only $5 billion for a project with a U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimated price tag of $18 billion spent over 10 years, that is already a compromise. That $18 billion amounts to 0.0338 percent of the $53 trillion the Congressional Budget Office estimated the federal government will spend from 2018 through 2027.
For a few days, Trump dropped his demand for wall funding, angering much of his base. Did the likely next speaker of the house, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., applaud Trump's "bipartisanship" and his "willingness to reach across the aisle"? Hardly. Left-wing cable pundits mocked Trump as having "caved" on a campaign promise due to the supposedly shrewd negotiating skills of the Democrat leadership. A Vanity Fair article called Trump's retreat a "capitulation." When Trump reversed his reversal, the same critics promptly accused him of yielding to the demands of "right-wing" television and radio hosts.
The late President George Herbert Walker Bush knew the feeling. When he violated his "no new taxes" pledge, did Dems praise this "compromise" as an example of how "both sides can work together to get things done" on behalf of the American people? Please. James Carville, Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign manager used it against Bush, calling it "the most famous broken promise in the history of American politics."
The media has taken to calling the southern border wall "Trump's wall" or "his" wall, as if it were devoid of usefulness in slowing down illegal border-crossers. When Republicans began calling President Barack Obama's health care plan "Obamacare," some Democrats called this personalization "racist." MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry said, "The word (Obamacare) was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man, to render him inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments." Would these be the same "wealthy white men" who, in the 1990s, referred to Hillary Clinton's health care plan as "Hillarycare"?
Some Democrats denounce the border wall as "racist." Pelosi called the wall -- and Trump's plan for a path to citizenship for 1.8 million "dreamers" -- a "hateful anti-immigrant scheme" designed to advance the president's agenda to "make America white again." This pushes the left's narrative that not only is Trump racist, but so are the Republicans who voted for him. This attack has been effective. A recent Axios poll finds that 61 percent of Democrats believe Republicans are "racist/bigoted/sexist," while 31 percent of Republicans feel that way about Democrats.
Beyond "racist," say many Democrats, the wall is "wasteful" and "ineffective." Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said, "Democrats are certainly happy to talk about border security, but we're not going to build this stupid vanity wall of Donald Trump's with U.S. taxpayer dollars." He called the wall "inefficient, wasteful technology." Pelosi said: "(The wall's) the wrong thing to do. It doesn't work. It's not effective. It's the wrong thing to do and it's a waste of money."
News bulletin: Democrats base legislation on efficiency and effectiveness?!
Fine, let's examine the massive spending that's occurred since President Lyndon Johnson's so-called war on poverty, an effort launched in the mid-'60s. In the following five decades, according to The Heritage Foundation, taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion in this effort. The result? Poverty, trending down in America before the mid-'60s, reversed itself. Poverty among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. Five years into Johnson's "war," America's poverty rate declined to 12.1 percent. But within a few years, poverty reversed course and increased to 15 percent, where it has more or less remained. This "war" led to greater government dependency and increased fatherlessness as a growing number of single mothers, in essence, married the government. Has the "war on poverty" passed the efficiency test?
Then there's Obama's nearly $1 trillion "stimulus" plan that failed to achieve its own unemployment reduction targets. Ditto his "Cash for Clunkers," "Cash for Caulkers" and "green-tech" programs, which have cost taxpayers billions of dollars while failing to achieve their objectives.
Obama, after insisting he lacked authority, used an executive order to create Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals -- even though immigration law is up to Congress. But Trump can't use $5 billion from this year's $700 billion defense budget for a down payment on a border wall for national security, the principal job of the commander in chief?
It’s definitely not a lack of money....It’s a lack of caring about security for the citizenry and a desire for illegal voters...
That is a terrible picture...Looks like President Trump is being hanged....
Block any more of Schumer’s cop shooters.
It’s about pleasing one’s own side’s voters. A long shutdown will focus peoples’ minds about what they really care about.
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It does look like that.
I wonder if that was purposeful.
Democrats want a ‘safe and secure’ corrupt SWAMP in Washington...
Americans want a safe and secure country.
Democrats want wars in the middle east - and big ‘speakers’ fees’...
Americans want out of senseless wars in the middle east...
Democrats want cheap labor illegals flooding across open borders. Democrats will use the levers of power to keep borders open.
Trump wants to close the borders - stop illegals from invading the country.
RINO’s want to sit on their hands while American citizens try to close the borders with petitions, bake sales and go fund me pages...
Stand up for President Trump... it’s our best chance.
I don’t know...But it is really bad...
The sad thing is we’re giving over $10 billion in aid to Mexico, Guatemala, and other Central American countries. If that aid were just cut in half, it would cover this wall funding.
The swamp-dwellers insanity regarding President Trump is obvious as usual...
I don’t think Larry Elder would put it in his article...Probably done by the editor...
Of all the government shutdowns, how many has Congress “won?”
To the US government, 5 billion dollars spent for ANYTHING is just “chump change”.
Covering the President’s request for 5 billion is no problem...It is a mere drop in the bucket...It’s the leftist/communist/democrats refusal to do anything for President Trump, American security, or the everyday American people...
The vision of a Kanye West leading black voters off of the plantation terrifies them. They have to keep the back door open in case of emergency. :)
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I agree about Larry. He's one of the REAL GOOD guys.
BTW, if you check out the little slightly curved line to the right (and the big straight line from his head) the whole thing behind him looks like a huge basketball.
;-)
LOL...Yeah, it does....
It begins today...Democrat, Schumer & Pelosi “The Chinese Fire Drill” escapade of failure. No need to comment or bad mouth...these Democrat morons & buffoons will destroy themselves and the Democrat party.
Trump owns the Executive, The Senate and the Judiciary....Pelosi will be an “empty suit”, no power majority Speaker...just like failed Republican Paul Ryan. Nothing will get done or passed!!! LMAO!!!
Illegal voters and the drug flow.
Knowing leftists, the photographer undoubtedly angled his shot on purpose to create the suggestion that the President was dangling at the end of a rope. Leftists are vile that way.
Maybe a few right-thinking people should create images showing Nancy “Mummified” Pelosi, Chucky “Child Killer” Schumer, and hundreds of other prominent leftist liars and murderers hanging from actual nooses with their tongues sticking out and their dead eyes bulging in terror. That would be good for a ginormous laugh!
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