The signature promise of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was that he would build a massive wall along the nation’s southern border and that not a penny of it would be charged to the American taxpayer. He repeatedly boasted that he would get Mexico to pay for it.
But now that this lie has been all but abandoned, Senate Republicans reportedly plan to divert billions of dollars from health and education to make up the difference.
Roll Call reported on Thursday that Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) has written a Fiscal Year 2020 Labor-HHS-Education spending bill allocation “that is about $5 billion lower than it would have been to provide funding for the wall.” If this proposal gets the 60 votes required for passage in the Senate, it would still need to be negotiated with the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
View the complete August 9 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.