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It’s not about the wall being immoral. It’s about it being monumentally stupid and a waste of money. There are much better solutions.

• baron816 8y ago
  I think the more important thing is to keep a single branch from using a shutdown as a tool to get their way. Government via hostage taking is not democratic.
  • sigfubar 8y ago
    Both branches of the government are holding the country hostage.
    • dragontamer 8y ago
      Only one person veto'd the continuing resolution this time around. We know who to blame. If both sides walked away from the CR, then maybe you'd have a point. But only ONE side (of the three sides: House, Senate, and President) have walked away from the CR. Shutdown also started when the House was controlled by Republicans. The shutdown was 10-days old before Pelosi took the gavel and Democrats entered the house. Former speaker Ryan didn't feel like fixing the issue on his way out, so he left it to the Democrats. McConnell, while he's gone into hiding recently, managed to pass a bill in late December which could have prevented the shutdown (so McConnell barely gets a passing grade. A C-, he did something to stop the shutdown at least. But McConnell should show some leadership and rally the Senate to stop the shutdown today, just as he did back in December) I place the blame mostly on the President (for destroying the CR agreement McConnell passed), and somewhat on Mr. Ryan for walking away from the problem on the last 10 days of his Speakership.
      • pastor_elm 8y ago
        Republicans passed a CR while they had the house but it was filibustered by Democrats in the Senate. So TWO sides have walked away actually.
        • dragontamer 8y ago
          > Republicans passed a CR while they had the house but it was filibustered by Democrats in the Senate https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2018/12/19/senate-section/article/S7898-4 https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2018/12/19/sen... The senate passed a CR on December 19th / 20th, which would have prevented the shutdown (at least until Feb 8). Period. The House failed to pass this CR. The measure passed with 71 Ayes. That's filibuster proof (and Veto-proof to boot), with numerous Democrats and Republicans agreeing together. Your history is straight up wrong.
          • pastor_elm 8y ago
            Nope. Check it out dawg. House passed it. Dem Senators scuttled it: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll472.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll472.xml
            • dragontamer 8y ago
              That's not a clean CR and you know it wasn't. IE: The House capitulated to Trump's demands for a wall. $5 Billion on the wall, which is why it passed the House. The Senate bill I talked about before (with 71-votes for aye) was CLEAN, it was apolitical. It was simply keeping funding at the same levels as last year while the debate continued.
      • kolbe 8y ago
        I'm not sure about that logic. It's just a consequence of the order of operations. If the process went Sentate->President->House for approval, the House would be the only one to not approve a bill that included wall funding.
        • dragontamer 8y ago
          There are five groups in play. The 115th Senate, the 116th Senate, the 115th House, the 116th House, and finally the President (who didn't change). The 115th Senate passed a CR. The 115th House failed to pass the CR. The 116th House passed a CR, that the 116th Senate is failing to pass. ------- In any case, the 115th Senate passed a CR with OVERWHELMING support: 71-Aye, 21 Nay, 8 not voting. That's both filibuster-proof AND veto-proof (if the bill were to come back). A huge portion of the country wants the CR to happen (ie: Keep government open while the debate happens). -------- Its hard to blame the 115th House (they didn't want to embarrass the President), or the 116th Senate (McConnell also doesn't want to embarrass the President). But it is clear that Trump's actions on the last week of December rallied the Republicans to support the wall more vigorously. But those 71 Senators who voted "Aye" for the late 2018 December CR : where are they now? They heard the President, and have decided to change their minds on the issue. ------ Ask yourself: why is the Dec 2018 CR dead? Who killed it? How can a bill with 71 Aye votes in the Senate eventually die?
        • jasonlotito 8y ago
          Good reason for that: Congress controls the purse. The House already passed legislation that all Senators in December passed, so most of the Senators still there voted in favor of the bill. Congress doesn't need the President's approval, either. They can override his veto. The Senate has the votes for that already based on votes for the same legislation already. The Senate could take it up for a vote again, and pass the bill they already passed, but they won't, purely for political games.
          • masonic 8y ago
            They aren't the same bill (115th vs 116th).
    • maneesh 8y ago
      I didn't know there were only two branches of the government
      • AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        There are three branches. There are only two that are involved in passing budgets.
    • FireBeyond 8y ago
      How so? The populace elected a Democrat majority to the House. They don't want the Wall. They are under zero obligation to fund it, and it is not hostage-taking to do so.
    • murph-almighty 8y ago
      I mean, if you count Mitch McConnell twice refusing to entertain spending bills that previously passed in the Senate, then yes, both branches are holding the government hostage.
      • PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        And given that Mitch McConnell only has that ability by consent of the Senate. They could elect someone else in his place if they wanted to (Democrats might very well vote for a different Republican in such a case instead of voting party lines. it would only take a few Republicans siding with Democrats to replace Mitch).
    • JamesBarney 8y ago
      Mind going into a little more detail? The house has passed a CR, last years senate has passed a CR. Mitch McConnell refuses to allow a vote on a CR until the president says he won't veto it. To me this issue seems like a pretty straightforward case of one branch holding the country hostage.
    • TomMckenny 8y ago
      That would be more plausible if one side had not already claimed "credit" for the shut down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n-Y4TIgktg&feature=youtu.be&t=42 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n-Y4TIgktg&feature=youtu.be...
    • LyndsySimon 8y ago
      This is exactly how the US federal government is designed to operate. The reason that it's such a harmful thing right now is because the federal government employs far more people than it was designed to employ.
  • adwf 8y ago
    Exactly. If the president vetoes everything unless he gets his way, then you might as well get rid of the other branches of government entirely and have him write/pass all the bills himself. Otherwise known as a dictatorship.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      Congress can override a Presidential veto.
      • AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        And I'd love to see the Republicans in Congress do that in this instance. But I'm not holding my breath...
  • eumenides1 8y ago
    I actually think Government via hostage taking is fine. The Government won't be hurt in the end, it is a non-corporeal entity. The people who work for the government won't be fine. What I think needs to happen is that the hostage takers have to be brought to justice or made to pay for utilizing such tactics. I think the hardest part is that the people have to remember this transgression at a personal level.
  • jasonlotito 8y ago
    Not just one branch, but one part of the branch: The Senate. The ball is literally in their court. McConnell already passed the bill. He voted for it. That he's not voting on it again is shameful.
  • masonic 8y ago
    Does that apply to the shutdowns under Obama and Clinton?
• manfredo 8y ago
  Granted, the other way of thinking about it is that spending 5 billion on the wall is a lot less expensive than continuing the shutdown.
  • shereadsthenews 8y ago
    Negotiating with hostage takers never makes sense.
    • nightski 8y ago
      Unfortunately that is the stance both sides are taking right now.
    • manfredo 8y ago
      Which is also the stated reason why Trump isn't negotiating with Democrats. Both Democrats and Republicans have the ability to end the shutdown, so both sides can accuse the other of hostage taking. Of course, the real problem I see is that the whole budget needs to be renewed by Congress and the Executive, rather than just approving changes in the budget. Makes more sense to me that we vote on the delta. But I guess a lot about US politics doesn't make sense.
      • phailhaus 8y ago
        The difference is that Democrats and the GOP were on the verge of passing the CR until Trump changed his mind and refused to sign. In this case it is very clear that the GOP shoulders the blame for the shutdown.
    • assblaster 8y ago
      Shouldn't Pelosi be considered the hostage taker by essentially denying funding for the single biggest promise to the electorate made during the 2016 election? It seems more like subversion by Pelosi.
      • shereadsthenews 8y ago
• pavlov 8y ago
  Also, the $5B number that Trump is hung up on seems to be completely arbitrary. Every estimate — including by the White House — suggests that any border wall even close to serving its stated purpose would cost at least $20 billion, probably way more.
  • drak0n1c 8y ago
    The plan is to build in increments, starting with the areas that see the most traffic.
• jfengel 8y ago
  Ah, but the question is, are you willing to stand up for that fact, at the total cost of the economy, as well as the individuals directly affected? There is a person with a literal veto who believes that the wall is a good thing, and who seems resistant to persuasion. How long are you willing to risk damaging the economy before you give in to that person? At this point, it's not really about just how bad or good an idea it is. (And, of course, I agree with you that it's a monumentally bad idea.) It's about perception: how much suffering you can stand (and stand to watch), and how much you're willing to risk being perceived as causing that suffering by failing to knuckle under. Also take into account the fact that this unpersuadable veto-holder seems to genuinely enjoy watching that suffering, and that his supporters appear to agree with him on that. In terms of the facts, the choices seem fairly obvious. But our choices are often made primarily not on the facts at hand, but the fact that people disagree despite that.
• CodeSheikh 8y ago
  Spend that money on increasing border patrol personnel, give them pay raises, ask American companies to make cheap drones and give them tax breaks, install motion based security systems. That $5B is going to get a 100 mile worth long wall which is not going to solve the "BIGGER" problem. Trump is a builder and he thinks like one. Sometimes concrete is not the solution.
• deleted 8y ago
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• thatoneuser 8y ago
  Why do you think it will be a waste of money? What are the better solutions? Walls are typically effective, hence their ubiquity. I have yet to see a counter proposal that would guarantee the long term security in implementation (read: something the next president can't just come in and yank out) that a wall provides. I'm not a fan of the wall, but it seems to me to be more effective than what most people give it credit.
  • acchow 8y ago
    Aren't most "illegal immigrants" crossing the border legally (such as entering as a tourist) and then just never leaving?
    • AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      I don't have hard data, but I'm pretty sure that the answer is no. The majority are crossing in an unauthorized manner, rather than crossing in an authorized manner and then overstaying the terms of their entry.
  • matt4077 8y ago
    First of all, the problem as such does not exist: illegal border crossings are at there lowest in decades, and what remains is a stream of young, eager people as easily integrated into the economy as previous generations of (Irish/Italian/Jewish/etc) immigrants. And even if, serious conservatives point at far better uses for the money, such as shoring up the system of immigration judges.
    • masonic 8y ago
      What price do you place on the lives of the victims? https://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-immigration/examples-serious-crimes-illegal-aliens https://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-immigration/examples-se...
  • dragontamer 8y ago
    > Walls are typically effective, hence their ubiquity. What is this? The middle ages? Drug Dealers are buying drones for $1000 to smuggle cocaine into our country by air. 1-kilo of Cocaine makes $20,000 once it crosses the boarder, they can certainly afford $1000 drones. A concrete wall does literally nothing in the modern era. Spend it on radar, more men, and judges (judges to process all of those asylum seekers).
• khawkins 8y ago
  The National Border Patrol Council, a labor union with over 18,000 members and represents the US Border Patrol, fully endorses congress funding the border wall [1]. It's the solution that the people who are actually there, on the ground, are asking for. And in terms of money, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 spent $831 billion since it was passed. The border patrol is asking for a pittance of that amount. [1] https://bpunion.org/featured/why-congress-should-fund-trumps-border-wall/ https://bpunion.org/featured/why-congress-should-fund-trumps...
  • kss238 8y ago
    Previously it was against the wall. What happened? https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/59v7k3/border-patrol-union-just-deleted-a-webpage-saying-a-wall-would-be-wasting-taxpayer-money https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/59v7k3/border-pat...
    • whamlastxmas 8y ago
      Both you and that article are misleading and completely ignore the very next sentence where it calls them "essential". They were ultimately saying the real problem is immigration law.
• a_tractor 8y ago
  >There are much better solutions. Like what? ~400,000 people are apprehended at the border each year. That means they have been captured after successfully entering US territory and must now go through legal deportation procedures. This overburdens our immigration court system to a degree that makes enforcing existing laws, much less any reforms, impossible. We have no idea how many evaded apprehension. The existing fence built for the Secure Fence Act of 2006 is inadequate as well as costly. In a 5 year period alone the fence had been breached 9,287 times at an average cost of $784 per repair. There are plenty of examples from around the world of walls and heavy duty fences reducing illegal crossings up to 99%. So, specifically, what other solutions can be implemented that: 1. will significantly hinder illegal border crossings and force significantly more immigrants through legal channels 2. wont simply be neglected by a future administration, as we have witnessed with our existing laws and policies for the last several decades 3. provide long-term relief from the enormous expense and manpower of apprehending, holding, processing, and deporting those who successfully cross the border illegally.