Trump now says US taxpayers will pay for
Wall, will make Mexico pay us back. Right.
President-elect
Donald Trump's transition team has signaled to Republicans in Congress that
Trump would like to fund his infamous planned U.S.-Mexico border wall through
the Congressional appropriations process in April, House Republican officials told CNN Thursday.
In
doing so, the president-elect appears poised to break one of his core anti-immigrant
campaign promises: that Trump would build a wall to "keep the
Mexicans out," and that Mexico would pay for it. (Early in his
presidential campaign, he even promised to force Mexico to
build the wall.)
Early
Friday morning, Trump defended his move on Twitter by alleging that Mexico
would pay the U.S. back for the cost of building the wall.
Rep.
Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), congressional liaison for the Trump transition team,
doubled down on Trump's position in comments to CNN: "When
you understand that Mexico's economy is dependent upon U.S. consumers, Donald
Trump has all the cards he needs to play," Collins said. "On the
trade negotiation side, I don't think it's that difficult for Donald Trump to
convince Mexico that it's in their best interest to reimburse us for building
the wall."
However,
Mexico's president has vociferously and repeatedly said that the country will not pay for Trump's promised wall.
"We're not going to pay for that fucking wall," former president
Vicente Fox added last March, as Common Dreams reported.
When it comes to funding the wall through taxpayer dollars, Republicans "are considering whether to tuck the border wall funding into a must-pass spending bill that must be enacted by the end of April," Politico reported Thursday.
Congressional
Republicans therefore believe that appropriating funds for the wall, expected
to run into the billions, will pass easily, arguing that
Democrats "would fall in line [when] faced with the choice of funding
the wall or shutting down the government," reports The Hill.
And
on the campaign trail last year, Trump proposed another plan for funding the
wall: "sharp tariffs on money that native Mexicans send back to their
families," The Hill notes. Salon's
Simon Maloy decried that
plan as "impractical and repugnant."
Moreover,
the Associated
Press reported Friday
morning that the Trump transition team is also exploring ways to build a new
wall without relying on new legislation authorizing it.
AP observes that
"whatever steps might be taken without Congress' approval would be likely
to fall short of the extravagant new wall on the border that Trump repeatedly
said Mexico would pay for.
And despite Congress' involvement in approving any
spending, such an approach might also open Trump to charges of going around the
House and the Senate to take unilateral actions, something he repeatedly
criticized President Barack Obama for doing."
And
of course, there already exists a
wall between the U.S. and Mexico. "Should Trump actually win, how could he
build something that already exists?" wondered border
and immigration expert Todd Miller last year.
In
fact, AP notes
that it's "not clear how much could be done along the 2,000-mile
border without additional actions by Congress."
"Lawmakers
passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, but most of those 700 miles have already
been built," the wire service adds.