Rising stakes for Trump in looming wall battle
Lack of bipartisan support sets up funding fight in Congress
WASHINGTON — Two days after President Donald Trump signed an annual spending bill stripped of funds to build a border wall, the Republican National Committee sent out a petition from “Trump Headquarters.” It carried a blunt warning:
“Either Congress funds President Trump’s much-needed border wall — or we LOSE the midterm elections.”
Though likely an effective fundraising tool with conservatives who propelled Trump to the White House, the appeal faces a stark political reality in Congress, where Democrats have drawn a line in the sand.
Even in the current polarized political environment, major spending agreements have needed bipartisan majorities to pass, and the same dynamic will likely hold in September, when the 2018 funding battle gets underway in earnest.
“There is no change in the politics of the wall in September,” said Norman Ornstein, a veteran Congress watcher at the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research institute in Washington.
Although Trump insists that his plans for a wall remain intact, ana-
lysts say he will face at least three obstacles in the fall: uniform Democratic opposition; a divided Republican caucus; and costs estimates that surpass $20 billion.
“If anything changes,” Ornstein said, “it is the willingness of Freedom Caucus members to go along with a budget that fails to slash domestic spending.”
Trump has requested $2.6 billion in 2018 to build some 70 miles of barriers in the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso and south of Tucson, Ariz. That’s on top of the $1 billion he didn’t get this year.
The $1 trillion deal he signed to keep the government open through September does include $1.5 billion for border security, but the money can’t be spent on building a wall.
Some analysts say the deal could be a precursor of the wall’s fate in September, even if the Department of Homeland Security continues moving forward with proposals for a 30-foot wall prototype.
“He’s facing a minority party that does not want this at all, and he has a majority party that’s not united in favor of it,” said political scientist David Crockett, a presidential scholar at Trinity University in San Antonio. “He may be able to cobble together some money for parts of the wall or fences, call it a victory and go home, even if it’s not the ‘big, beautiful wall’ we were promised.”
Not all Republicans in favor
Scoring money for a wall would still only partially fulfill Trump’s campaign pledge. The bigger applause line in his campaign was that Mexico would pay for it.
With Mexico continuing to refuse, Trump’s Plan B has been to win support for the project among Republicans. But with a narrow majority in the Senate, and a cluster of hard-line conservatives in the House wary of budgets that don’t balance, Trump’s options continue to narrow.
Compounding the political dilemma are Republicans in Texas and other border regions who see Trump’s wall as an impractical solution to the problem of border security. Chief among them is San Antonio Republican Will Hurd, whose district runs along 800 miles of the Mexican border.
“A one-size-fits-all border solution won’t address the border’s complexities,” Hurd tweeted earlier this month after taking a boat tour of Lake Amistad and the Rio Grande Valley.
In a constituent newsletter early this month, with pressure building and negotiations on border wall spending in full swing, Hurd said his position had not changed.
“There is no question that we must secure our border, but building a wall from sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to go about doing so,” he said.
Others, including Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, have expressed skepticism about Trump’s literal vision of a continuous physical barrier, depicting the call for a wall as a metaphor for enhanced patrols, surveillance, technology upgrades, and other security improvements.
That points to a bipartisan consensus for border security, but not necessarily a wall, which House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has called “immoral, expensive (and) unwise.”
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s insistence on wall funding last month would risk a government shutdown. That threat also will loom in the background of any budget battle in the fall.
Texas U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a centrist Democrat from Laredo, is seeking to defuse tensions in a search for middle ground. “My constituents live on the border, so they definitely want strong, smart border security,” he said. “They also want to see bipartisan cooperation. Members of Congress who represent districts on our southern border — Democrats and Republicans — oppose a border wall, and we’re finding ways to work together on the real challenges our communities face.”
Many Texans oppose wall
With Republicans in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the GOP would seem to have much more to lose from a government shutdown. Analysts say that calculus weakens Trump’s hand, despite his suggestion in a recent tweet that a “good shutdown” could force a partisan confrontation over federal spending, including money for a wall on the southern border.
While the RNC appears to be fundraising off grass-roots conservative support for a wall, it is far from clear that it is a winning hand for Republicans’ when it comes to holding their majorities in the House and Senate.
“It doesn’t help them at the ballot box,” said Texas Democrat Matt Angle, executive director of the Lone Star Project. “But it does help at the bank account.”
A nonpartisan Lyceum poll last month found that nearly twothirds of Texans oppose construction of a border wall — that in a state that Trump won in November with 52 percent of the vote. A national poll in February by the Pew Research Center found similar results.
Texas GOP operatives acknowledge that a pro-wall stance would likely hurt candidates like Hurd, whose district went to Democrat Hillary Clinton. Two other Texas Republicans represent districts Clinton won: Pete Sessions, in Dallas, and John Culberson in Houston. Sessions’ office has described the wall as an “analogy” for a strong border; Culberson is on record supporting Trump’s plan to secure the border with an actual wall.
Nationally, Clinton won 23 House districts represented by Republicans in November, while Trump won 12 districts represented by Democrats. That could only embolden Democrats in the coming spending battle for 2018.
“If Congress refuses to fund your stupid wall during your honeymoon period, what makes you think we will ever fund it?” tweeted Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat.
But conservatives seeking to stem the flow of illegal immigration see some value in pressing for the wall, even if it is not seen as the best way to fortify the border. “You could make a defensible case that Republicans could be really weakened in 2018 if Trump is seen has having sold out to the swamp,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that advocates for lower levels of immigration.
Whatever the wall’s resonance with voters at large, it proved to be the marquee issue for the activist base that helped get Trump elected. “He didn’t get thousands of people chanting along with him about ending the carried interest deduction,” Krikorian said.
Calling it a security issue
Come September, it will be hard for Trump to back down like he did this month. If that leads to a government shutdown in October, Krikorian said it will be up to Republicans to frame it as a national security issue.
“Any government shutdown fight really is a kind of political campaign,” he said. “That’s the whole point of it. The question is, how do you manage that campaign? How do you frame the issue?”
As a fallback, Republicans could push a broader definition of a “wall” — one that combines fencing, sensors, levees, or natural barriers, like the cliffs in Big Bend National Park. Krikorian notes that Trump’s core backers have proven resilient. “He’s got a lot of flexibility from his voters about what ‘the wall’ means,” he said. “But he’s got to have something you can take a picture of.”
For Trump, and the RNC — where his political operation is housed — that could mean that the looming battle over wall funding is less about the 2018 midterm elections than it is about the 2020 presidential election.
At a recent rally in Pennsylvania to mark his 100th day in office, Trump renewed his signature campaign pledge. “We will build a wall, folks, don’t even worry about it,” he said. “Go to sleep. Go home. Go to sleep, rest assured.”
To some analysts, Trump has walled himself in.
“Trump would have some explaining to do in 2020,” said University of Texas political scientist Sean Theriault, envisioning a reelection campaign with no wall.
“It wasn’t ever clear that the Republican Party even got behind the wall as much as Trump,” he said. “Especially in the Texas delegation. They’re not jumping up and down for the wall.”
“(President Trump) may be able to cobble together some money for parts of the wall or fences, call it a victory and go home, even if it’s not the ‘big, beautiful wall’ we were promised.” David Crockett, presidential scholar, Trinity University