Posted on 02/11/2019 9:44:41 PM PST by 11th_VA
... They tentatively agreed to far less money for President Donald Trump's border wall than the White House's $US5.7 billion ($NZ8.4b) wish list, settling for a figure of nearly $1.4 billion, according to congressional aides. The funding measure is through the fiscal year, which ends on 30 September.
The agreement means 88km of new fencing - constructed through existing designs such as metal slats instead of a concrete wall - but far less than the 350km the White House demanded in December. The fencing would be built in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. The agreement yielded curbed funding, overall, for ICE detention beds, which Democrats promised would mean the agency would hold fewer detainees than the roughly 49,000 detainees held two days ago, the most recent date for which figures were available. Democrats claimed the number of beds would be reduced to 40,520.
But a proposal to cap at 16,500 the number of detainees caught in areas away from the border - a limit Democrats say was aimed at preventing overreach by the agency - ran into its own Republican wall.
Democrats dropped the demand in the latest round of talks, and the mood in the Capitol improved markedly.
Mr Trump met earlier today with top advisers in the Oval Office to discuss the negotiations. He softened his rhetoric on the wall but ratcheted it up when alluding to the detention beds issue...
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Rinos in the Senate are actually in the majority there. One would be astonished at the number of Republicans who have lower Conservative Review (CR) approval ratings than some Democrats!
1. For reasons expressed in a previous reply ( http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3722962/posts?page=129#129 ) Many Republican senators, read Rinos, are simply not going to take any political risk whatsoever in support of a wall nor will they take any perceived political risk in support of Donald Trump. Hence, little Republican support for the wall. 2. Many Rino Republican senators are delighted to see the president in a political predicament because their allegiance is not to his office, not to him as titular head of the Republican Party, not to Donald Trump personally and certainly not to Donald Trump's populist message. To the contrary, their constituency is not the people who elect them but the donor class. To the degree that Donald Trump is neutralized, their real constituents are content.
3. Mitch McConnell has long stated his intractable opposition to any government shutdown. He is often said that a shutdown would not be permitted. His message to the people he governs is that the purpose of government is to govern, the best way to govern is to compromise, read accommodate. Therefore, a government shutdown represents the breakdown of good government. His message is a cynical misrepresentation of the desires of the donor class contrived for the benefit of the voting public. Do not forget, Mitch McConnell owes his position as leader of the Senate to the fact that he can fund the campaigns of many senators or, conversely, he can fund the campaigns of senators' opponents-and he has done so. Mitch McConnell's constituency is the donor class, the rest is all posturing.
President Trump is in a box because he is forced to a choice. If he fails to oppose this sham compromise to the imperative of border security, he will unquestionably forfeit the support of much of his base and jeopardize his chances of reelection.
On the other hand, if he opposes this sham compromise, as he most likely will, he will do so in an effort to head off the Senate from approving the compromise. It is a given that the Democrat house will approve the compromise, precisely because it puts the president in this dilemma. If his opposition to the compromise fails to hold the Senate, his predicament then will be whether to veto the compromise which would necessarily precipitate another shutdown of the government, for which he will be blamed by many in the media and many in his own party because he will have rejected a compromise acceptable to his own party.
These realities will have been plain to the senators who fashioned this compromise and will be equally plain to the senators in his own party who might voice their approval of the compromise. Yet they cut the deal.
We conservatives should take a look at this entire wall issue and extend our horizon to consider how it is that the president is put so often into this kind of dilemma by the Rinos of his own party. Should we confine our indignation to this issue or should we be looking at a solution to the structural problem which creates these lose-lose predicaments so often?
Bait and switch. He should go back to his original 30+ billion request for that.
As to a veto of continuing resolutions, which Trump threatened to do and has failed to follow through on, we fiscal conservatives ought to recognize that the president never campaigned on balancing the budget. Indeed he never campaigned on cutting any entitlement-except perhaps Obama care to the degree that is considered an entitlement.
So the question has to be asked, how committed is Trump personally to cutting spending. He has an uncanny ability to read the public and he knows that conservatives rarely get elected by telling the people to eat their spinach when their Democrat opponents are promising they will keep the music playing.
The reason for this is that there is no accountability for deficits or debt because we are simply printing money. Please see:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3723710/posts?page=122#122
nix ICE funding all together...
So Traitors. They’re traitors.
Just say it.
The had more votes on the Committee.
Pelosi said not one cent. Liberals on twitter are calling her out and pissed. Well see where this goes.
I’m sure the President will sign it. He still has another year for funding until reelection.
Republicans cave again.
In short, democrats get more than want they wanted and Republicans get even less than what they had.I
Never negotiate with these leftist terrorists.
JoMa
Mr. President....BUILD THAT NICE BIG, BEAUTIFUL WALL.
I agree
Well described, the problems of America will not be solved within the system. Trump cannot do it alone and the Uniparty is bent on the destruction of the existing USA. The Tree of Liberty is very thirsty and unless lamp posts from the Capitol to the White House are decorated with traitors, the country is going to be swamped with illegal alien invaders.
Our side can hold it all and we get more spending and more H1b visas.
I think he will too. The whole thing is ridiculous. I thought hed have his contractors begin building the day after inauguration. I really did.
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