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A Quote That Ruined My First Cup of Coffee this Morning
This quote started smoke coming out of my ears, “We cannot accept the offer they made of a billion-dollar slush fund for the president to implement his very wrong immigration policies,” Pelosi told reporters. “So that won’t happen.” She is referring to funds for a wall.
Here is the start of a list of the things that are wrong with this statement:
- Our immigration policies are not “his.” They are laws that were written by Congress.
- A wall is not policy, it is a method to enforce policy. Anyone against a border control must be for open borders. I can’t see it any other way.
- Trump’s job as Executive is to enforce policy. If our immigration policies are “very wrong,” then the people in Pelosi’s position (Congress) are responsible for fixing them. Am I the only person that sees the irony of one of the key lawmakers blaming the Executive Branch for how bad our immigration policies are?
- One billion dollars is approximately 0.025% of what the Federal government spends annually. Given that half the people in the country want border security, why is spending this an issue — or even 10 times that amount?
Unfortunately the other half is winning right now. Unfortunately not all Republicans want a wall.
The left is always winning. Always. The GOP does not exist to stop them, but to enrich other GOP.
The political class is hopelessly corrupt.
Yes. Unfortunately, while a 2/3 majority support border control, it is only a voting priority in about 1/3… which means open borders keeps winning.
When the current 2/3 make it a voting priority, I fear they will be a just under 1/2 minority due to the open border types.
I wouldn’t take this quote too seriously. I think we’re witnessing a somewhat comical turn of events:
So now Pelosi needs to find some other way of picking a fight with Trump in a way that will play well for the cameras.
Ironic that Trump’s unilateral capitulation actually hurts Pelosi. Or 4-dimensional chess on Trump’s part……
@mendel “Trump’s unexpected unilateral retreat robbed her of the opportunity to go toe-to-toe with him“
I hadn’t thought about it this way. Boy, do I hope you are right. Between the non-wall and local crap going on here in my part of North Carolina, I’m about ready to pull in my tent and go hide. To he-double hockey sticks with the lot of them.
And the sad result of all this is that we will be inundated with Nancy Pelosi and her absurd/wrong-headed/nonsensical quotes for the next few years.
He could easily find the money in existing programs and budgets and I understand that is what he is going to do. He should take it from programs Democrats love.
Not to bring you back down again, but my comment wasn’t really meant to assuage.
I’m not sure what’s worse: an ideologically-driven Nancy Pelosi who actually believes quotes like the one in the OP, or a mercenary Nancy Pelosi who finds it necessary to pick a fight with Trump even after Trump capitulated to her just so she can keep her bloc firmly under her iron fist.
No, it’s what he’s saying he’s going to do – and he’s saying it at the moment when he’s exposed to the highest degree of criticism. Just like he said he was going to “claw back” a significant portion of the spending bill when his base criticized him for signing it earlier this year. Any update on how much has been clawed back?
I’m not a complete Trump hater – I’ll almost certainly vote for him in the next general election should he run – but I do scratch my head at the gullibility that still surrounds him. He now has a fairly established track record of saying “don’t worry, I lost this fight to Congress but I’ll find a way to make up for it” and never delivering.
I’ll bet dollars to maple frosted donuts that just enough of a wall gets built by 2020 to make for a great photo op of Trump standing in front of it – and not a mile more.
Words do have meaning. Usually. And so do lies. Sometimes the work is to glimpse the mind that chooses the words.
Unless it’s in the same appropriations account that funds the pertinent activity and follows any guidance from the relevant appropriations committees, he can’t legally do that without Congressional approval.
5. Money appropriated by Congress to a line item project authorized by Congress is not a Presidential “slush fund”.
They keep echoing it will never happen because the Progressives don’t believe in a wall, or border security. If they did, something would have been done about it since O had eight years to do something. There’s not even a discussion of alternative solutions by the Progressives. Send Pelosi and Schumer for a week to the border and go with the border patrol units, and see what they face.
And as compared to Trump, she sounds measured and wise.
I generally agree with you, but I disagree with point 2, in principle. There can be a reasonable cost-benefit objection to a specific border control proposal. Disagreement with a specific tactic or method of enforcing immigration law does not necessarily imply that the person objecting is a proponent of open borders.
I agree that, in this particular case, Pelosi is a proponent of something close to open borders. But there may be some good-faith disagreement on the part of other members of Congress regarding funding the wall.
FYI, personally, I am in favor of the wall funding that the President is seeking.
I’ll grant you it’s quite the contest between the two. But we’ve been listening to Pelosi for ages now. Can’t the Democrats at least find somebody new to be their crazed spokesperson?
Well, they’re working on that new one with the hyphen, but if the Democrats want to continue propping up their current botox cyborg I’m not gonna get in their way.
Curiously timed announcement, I thought, from the State Dept. (“Deep State” Dept?) saying that the State Dept is sending $10 billion, no Congressional approval needed, to Mexico and Central American countries in aid, supposedly to reduce the need for their huddled masses to trek northward.
Didn’t President Nixon “sequester” funds when he wanted to push Congress to take some particular action? Anyone remember how that kerfuffle came out?
This is deeply disturbing as this is tantamount to global blackmail. The US government is being blackmailed by foreign invaders.
When making these sorts of claims, we have to be careful about equating “border security” with “a wall.” They may seem synonymous, but the latest polling indicates that over 60% of us specifically oppose building a wall.
A Pew poll from last year summed up our priorities this way:
If it were a “slush fund”, Trump could spend it on anything. If it’s limited to border enforcement, it’s not a slush fund.
Besides the very decent items you mentioned, one billion dollars is 1/180th of what we spend on newly arrived immigrants and those who arrived five to ten years ago.
Now this is in no way a full measure of what allowing new arrivals to remain in this nation really cost us. Because if an immigrant couple or a woman gives birth, that child is immediately a citizen, so the costs to our society for the child’s medical expenses, food, housing and schooling are not included in the costs of immigration.
People who arrive here from south of the border have on an average around 4.1 children per couple. If the couple remains in Mexico City, they manage to get by with 3.4 children per couple.
Unfortunately many Americans are not well schooled on the notion of cost/benefit, or risk/benefit.
If they were, ads proclaiming that product X now has “twice the real tomato” in its sauce would not be quite so prolific. The average person has no idea that doubling something that is 3.5% of the entire amount is not all that significant. Nor do they realize that product X may still be far less nutritious than a product that already contains 15% tomato.
If Trump really wants that wall, he would do well to figure out how to mention its contribution to the environment. Adding another 400,000 people to California will not improve the smog in the big cities, or the ability to preserve wild life, as more roads, buildings consume the open spaces around many urban areas. The Left will do anything as long as “anything” is labelled “green.”
A slush fund for securing the border…bad.
A slush fund for paying off sexual harassment and sexual assault claims by Congress-scum…a-ok!
A wall is one method of border control. A very affective one. Other than price, what are the objections?
A wall doesn’t impact implementation of the priorities you have listed. Why can’t build a wall and implement those priorities?
The reason I favor a wall is that it enforces itself – unlike all the other proposed ‘solutions’ that are rendered pointless by politicians and their leashed agents who kinda, sorta don’t prevent people from coming in, and once in, fail to send them back out.
A wall is far more effective than unenforced law.
For the Federal Government, $ 1 Billion isn’t a slush fund; it barely qualifies as petty cash.
Twizzlers and York Peppermint Patties are fat free.
I’m not arguing against a wall. In fact I strongly favor building a wall. I’m simply pointing out that the polls I’ve seen (with a single exception) indicate that most people oppose building a wall.
Also; Peppermint Patties can be stacked into literal food pyramids.