The
Wall, the Shutdown, Mattis, Syria, Afghanistan—It’s a Tidal Wave of Incompetence
By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport New York Editor
Trump has moved ahead with a
partial government shutdown, rather than accept a budget without the
Wall.
Under
pressure from the most conservative of his supporters, Trump is betting that
this is the moment to take a stand, rather than sign the usual, last-minute,
kick-the-can-down-the-road temporary delay otherwise backed by his Republican
congressional majority to a new Congress with a Democratic House majority.
Let’s
be clear here. We’re all losing. But rather than appearing to suffer a personal
defeat, the president is making the rest of us feel it too.
As
the rest of the day’s news has made clear, this president cares only about his
opinion about matters of finance, security, immigration or national defense,
and will ignore advice or suffer the loss of important advisers like James T.
Mattis as defense secretary over the abrupt withdrawal of troops in Syria and
Afghanistan. The wall has been central, but not alone, in causing heads to
shake.
As Trump becomes more and more isolated the full range of White House action based on gut and campaign promises and virtually no actual information become much more important and potentially dangerous.
In one week, we’ve seen major disagreements about monetary policy, troop
deployment and now whether we actually have a working government.
Regardless of the outcome, the wall debate shows its sheer ugliness in revealing to what lengths the parties must go now to determine whether to pony up $5 billion just to meet campaign promises of Trump.
Indeed,
the ineptitude of waiting until the last minute makes clear several things that
will prove of lasting interest:
For
the White House, the physical wall, not the ability to keep out illegal
immigrants or police drugs or anything else, is paramount since the president
sees it as key to his image with supporters more than to the cause it might
serve. His immigration henchman, Stephen Miller, stone-facedly has kept
repeating that there is no Plan B should proposals for the Wall fail, though
yesterday, the president suggested he can find the money from different
existing accounts within the budget. Such action generally requires
congressional approval in four separate committees or the military can do the
job. (Don’t they already have day jobs?)
For
top Democrats, opposition to the Wall is an equally appealing (and maybe
appalling) siren. Not only do they seem to have adopted a morally superior
position, but they also appear to have the votes to stop the Trump insistence
machine and now want to flaunt it rather than create the immigration price tag
that Trump might have to pay to get what he wants. If it is a deal Trump wants,
why not show him just how expensive it needs to be: Certainly facts, worries of
allies, adverse stock markets and other real-time effect have nothing to do
with this decision.
Meanwhile,
some of those Republicans who were leaving Congress are going home to their
districts and apparently don’t intend to return to vote on government business,
walls or anything else. Talk about bravery. Or duty. Or even courtesy to the
process to which they pledged allegiance.
Perhaps
we can remind all of these people that these are the ones elected to run the
government, not to shut it down. These are people who are supposed to do their
jobs in large part without partisanship.
Instead, we have a president under fire on all parts of his administration, the subject of multiple investigations, sending out anemic spokesmen to offer babble in the face of prosecutorial facts, trying to bluster his way to a personal goal that has either missed its moment or never really had it. It looks now as if he will have to eat his own proposal.
We
have a Congress that wants no part of a wall and another $5 billion in deficit
spending, and we have a few thousand Central Americans at the border waiting
restlessly for a chance to make their pitch for asylum.
To Speaker-in-Waiting Nancy Pelosi’s point last week, the Republicans don’t seem to have even the requisite number of their own votes in the House, never mind that of the Democrats.
To Speaker-in-Waiting Nancy Pelosi’s point last week, the Republicans don’t seem to have even the requisite number of their own votes in the House, never mind that of the Democrats.
What
I see is that Trump has the time and attention to tweet hateful messages, get
involved in the military prosecution of a single Army officer facing murder
charges, has the temerity to attack the French government in its handling of
street protests, and shows no understanding of the complexities of health care
in America. But the wall, and by extension, Mexican underwriting of its
construction, can’t even keep enough of his focus to win the day.
We
see a flailing, bloviating egomaniac, more concerned with covering his rear end
than in protecting my interests as a citizen—interests that have nothing to do
with building a wall. Some of us rely on government services, whether they are
agricultural inspections of food or protection against communicable disease. Am
I missing something here?
That
Congress and Trump are finding the easiest path of extending government
spending by two or three weeks just to get by the holidays will not solve the
problem that comes together under the mantle of comprehensive immigration
issues. Instead, only some very focused and hard work is required to get to
practical, enforceable, understandable rules.
We
can be sure that a wise, intelligent, thoughtful approach is not on the agenda.
The politicians just don’t think we will insist on such a discussion. It is
much easier to rely on slogans that are fully resistant to the real problems of
real families whether in the United States or in Honduras or Guatemala.
Set
aside the idea that $5 billion is too much to pay for a bad solution, and not
nearly enough to pay for a wall, even if you think it is a good thing. The Rand
Institution is among those who argue that walls generally have proved bad ideas
for containment. The first thing they do, Rand argues, is to promote the
digging of tunnels, though mostly for drug traffic rather than for illegal
human routes into the United States.
The
discussion about the wall too easily slips into xenophobic talk about how
migrants are criminals or disease carriers or trying too hard to reach the
gravy train that they believe the United States to be.
If
Trump and Miller are so confident in their belief that a wall is an American
demand, let’s look to a new GoFundMe campaign that supporters have started to
raise the money outside of government; already 40,000 have contributed about $7
million, which is a bit short and raises the question: Where does the money go?
The Trump Foundation? Or commit to the government version of this: a bond
initiative in which the government goes to the markets to sell the bonds.
Instead, they play with my tax money against my services. Don’t they understand
that this angers me a great deal?
What’s
been lost here in the avoidance of actual deal-making is that the White House
needs to put some immigration chips on the table to get Democrats to do
something other than smirk. Instead, Trump and company are relying on the same
bullying behavior that seemingly was rejected “bigly” in the November
elections.
In
the meantime, this stalemate over the wall portends really bad things for
needed bipartisanship in Washington.
The future of health care is teetering on unsteady legal claims, the Chinese and the Russians are chewing away at our long-term alliances and our sense of security, the North Koreans and Iran are openly calling us bad names and continuing with weapons development that we abhor.
The Syria decision does show that there are bigger stakes at hand than Trump’s campaign promises.
The future of health care is teetering on unsteady legal claims, the Chinese and the Russians are chewing away at our long-term alliances and our sense of security, the North Koreans and Iran are openly calling us bad names and continuing with weapons development that we abhor.
The Syria decision does show that there are bigger stakes at hand than Trump’s campaign promises.
The
wall and the war over the wall ought to be telling us something important about
how we are resolving problems.
Indeed,
the emergent bipartisanship on a bill to reconsider criminal justice sentencing
over drug crimes seems to exemplify exactly what we can achieve, if we build
consensus rather than attack one another.