President Donald Trump is expected to raise his demands for border-wall funding this fall, up from $1.6 billion for 2018 to $2.5 billion for 2019.
The D.C. establishment is likely to reject the new border wall demand — unless Trump uses his low-immigration/high-wages immigration promises, the November elections and the retirement of House Speaker Paul Ryan to get his populist political allies into power in Congress.
The reports are appearing in Politico and the Washington Post. The Post reported:
the White House plans to increase its funding request for the wall in the 2019 budget year from $1.6 billion to $2.5 billion, according to two officials knowledgeable of the situation.
The promise of a bigger funding demand comes after Trump’s popular immigration-reform, and border-wall agendas were successfully blocked in 2018 by the bipartisan establishment. The establishment is now pushing Trump to talk up the problems of illegal immigration, the benefits of the tax cuts and their desire to import foreign workers, instead of the public concerns about immigration and wages.
The Senate blocked Trump’s reform plans in February 2018 and defunded his immigration priorities in the March omnibus. The omnibus provided funds for just 100 miles of fence and levee barrier, and also barred any spending on Trump’s concrete-and-steel border wall.
House Speaker Paul Ryan blocked Trump’s agenda in the omnibus and now is using the discharge-petition push to pressure Trump to accept a deal that would junk Trump’s immigration-law reforms.
Ryan’s potential deal would provide Trump with some level of border-wall funding in exchange for a big amnesty — and for abandoning any hope of getting his pro-American immigration-law reforms voted into law by the business-first establishment.
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