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“Congressional negotiators reached agreement Monday night to prevent a government shutdown and finance construction of new barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.” The deal includes just under $1.4 billion to construct 55 miles of fencing. AP News
The left supports the deal while criticizing many of Trump’s demands.
“The compromise, to be clear, is a mixed bag for progressives. But on balance, based on what we are learning now, it’s plainly more of a victory than not.”
Washington Post
“[Trump’s] comprehensive proposal to overhaul the legal and illegal immigration systems didn’t even have enough support among Republicans alone to pass the House last year. The wall has gone unfunded repeatedly. And the last major Department of Homeland Security spending bill, passed in March 2018, didn’t meet Trump’s demands for additional border patrol officers and reduced ICE detention beds. Nothing — not even shutting down the government for more than a month — has moved Trump closer to getting his funding demands in Congress…
It’s increasingly looking like Trump has no choice but to accept a bipartisan border security proposal that his most hardline allies see as pathetic.”
Vox
Some posit that “the whip count that matters here is not really what legislators on Capitol Hill think. It is probably — and we recognize the bizarreness of this sentence — more important what conservative commentators and Fox News presenters think of the deal than it is what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) thinks… Predicting where Trump falls after checking in with prominent members of the conservative media world is tricky. As of writing, though, signs are good for passage.”
Washington Post
Many are condemning Trump’s inaccurate claims when talking about the border wall. “Trump’s comments on Monday night echoed what he said about El Paso during his State of the Union speech last week — that fencing along its border with Ciudad Juárez installed during 2008 and 2009 directly reduced violent crime, even though data from the FBI says otherwise… There’s just one problem: Trump’s claim is false. Like many other American cities, violent crime in El Paso has been falling steadily for about 25 years, and actually went up slightly after border fencing was installed.”
Vox
Worth noting: “Starting in 2006, when Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, the federal government used eminent domain to seize… plots and put up barriers, as high as 18 feet… The cost has been staggering. The most recent 33 miles in the valley have set back taxpayers $641 million, or $19.4 million a mile, for a hodgepodge of fences, vehicle barriers, and some bollard fencing—with lots of gaps. And no one can really say, definitively, whether this project is worthwhile. To date, no federal agency has systematically audited what all the barriers cost and what, if any, effect they’ve had.”
The Atlantic
The right is not excited about the deal, but believes signing it is the best option for Trump.
The right is not excited about the deal, but believes signing it is the best option for Trump.
“Fifty-five miles isn’t much, but it’s better than zero, which is what Nancy Pelosi promised to allow… It’s certainly not a great deal, but it’s probably best for Trump to declare a victory on principle and sign off on it. It does force Pelosi to part with barrier funding, which will stick in her craw just as the limitations to that funding will stick in Trump’s. That may be good enough for most Trump supporters.”
Hot Air
“Is this a good agreement? No. It's a tiny bandaid on a much larger policy challenge that each party has powerful incentives not [to] solve. But guess what? Anything that might have come out of this broken process was going to be a stinker. Shutdown politics are bad politics… The realistic goal of this committee, from a GOP perspective, was to save a little bit of face and walk [away] with some modicum of plausibly-claimed non-defeat. Because there are some new barriers included, this deal checks that box.”
Townhall
Many argue that “it was malpractice not to get more funding for a border barrier out of Congress when it was held by Republicans… It was bizarre that the White House didn’t formally request more funding last year, before Trump drastically increased his demand to $5.7 billion near the end of process. Finally, it was foolhardy to lurch into a shutdown without a viable strategy for getting out of it. At least the current deal doesn’t reflect Nancy Pelosi’s vow not to approve a dollar for a border barrier, and Democrats backed off their demand in the negotiations for a hard cap on ICE detentions.”
National Review
Some note that “if one didn’t understand contemporary American politics, [the deal] would seem odd. Democrats have supported building a wall in the past, and President Trump has nothing against some relief for the DACA population, or even the broader group of ‘dreamers.’ Yet Trump came up almost empty on the wall and the Democrats came up empty on amnesty for illegal immigrants who were brought here as children.”
Power Line Blog
Going forward, “Trump needs to shift the debate to a place where he has real leverage: using the threat of a sequester, rather than a shutdown, to force the Democrats to give him his border barrier. In 10 months’ time, if Congress fails to act, then an automatic sequester will kick in that would reduce federal spending in 2020 to levels that Congress and President Barack Obama set in the Budget Control Act of 2011…
“That looming deadline gives Trump leverage he needs to get his wall. Democrats may not fear another shutdown, but will they really sacrifice $55 billion for domestic priorities next year just to deny Trump a measly $5.7 billion for a physical border barrier?”
Washington Post
“Handing Trump some wall money might have been worth it if Democrats had got something in return like legalizing the DREAMers… and others whose temporary protected status Trump scrapped. But Democrats failed to even put this on the table despite many hints by Republicans that they would consider a DREAMer-for-wall deal. The Democratic Party seems to be more interested in rallying their base with the issue than actually solving it.”
The Week
Tinder-style app for cows tries to help the meat market.
BBC
