Let’s Make a Wall Deal
The House passed a bill that would pony up nearly $1.6 billion for the first stretch of Donald Trump’s pet project.
.. And the release of a government report that estimates the Department of Homeland Security would have to screen 750,000 applicants to meet the president’s target for new Border Patrol hires.
.. And the discovery that Trump’s sudden announcement about barring transgender volunteers from the military was actually all about getting money to start building the … barrier.
.. But final passage was being held up by social conservatives, who were trying unsuccessfully to add an amendment barring the military from paying for gender reassignment surgery.
.. The vision of what the president wants in a wall keeps shifting. At first it was a 2,000-mile, 50-foot-tall concrete monolith. Then it became maybe a little shorter, and something with solar panels.
.. Trump also wants to hire 5,000 new Border Patrol officers, which the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general estimates would require the screening of 750,000 applicants. The jobs, it seems, can be both demanding and extremely boring. Clearly, the only answer would be to bring in foreign workers. As our president said when he was explaining why Mar-a-Lago keeps getting special visas to hire cooks and cleaners from abroad, “It’s very, very hard to get people.”
.. It’s not clear he thinks building it would do any good, but he certainly believes it makes him look good.
.. But Trump was fixated on his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall — not actually making it happen so much as making Mexico say it would happen. Or that “we will work it out.” Or just not mentioning that Mexico was never going to put up a dime. (“… you cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that.”)
.. So it’s all about image.
.. The chances we’ll ever see this $20-billion-plus project completed are minimal. But just keeping up pretenses will mean an enormous waste of money and effort. Maybe we could make a deal like the one Trump was trying to urge on the Mexicans. Whenever the subject of the wall comes up, we would all agree to say, “Hey, you never can tell.”