Trump budget renews call to fund border wall

President’s wish list sets up battle with Democrats, some Republicans

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, skunked in his request to fund a border wall in April, will pick up Tuesday where he left off, seeking $2.6 billion in new infrastructure and technology investments, including $1.6 billion as a down payment for his long-promised wall.

The new spending request is part of a 2018 budget he will submit to Congress that’s expected to be heavy on defense and national security initiatives, while cutting billions from Medicaid, welfare, food stamps and other social safety-net programs.

The president’s wish list also will include hundreds of millions for aircraft, equipment, surveillance technology and patrol officers on the 2,000-mile-long southwest border.

The $2.6 billion request to beef up the border is an increase from the $1.6 billion he sought for the remaining five months of the 2017 federal budget year, nearly $1 billion of that for the wall. Although Trump got much of the border security money he wanted, the bipartisan support he needed to avoid a government shutdown meant that none of it could be used to build a wall, which Democrats steadfastly opposed.

Going into the next budget battle in the fall, the political fault lines on border wall spending are well set — and unlikely to change.

Not only are Democrats uniformly opposed, some Republicans also have been skeptical about the costeffectiveness of an actual physical barrier, with most estimates surpassing $20 billion. Some border region Republicans, notably U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of San

Antonio, have called for smarter technology investments instead.

Many Democrats also have expressed a desire to fortify the border against drugs and human trafficking, though few if any see Trump’s wall as the solution.

“A border wall would be expensive and mostly unhelpful — more a political symbol than a tactical advantage,” U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, said Monday. “It’s just not serious. I had hoped that the administration was beginning to see reason on this issue. However, they still seem to be clinging to campaign slogans instead of digging into real policy solutions.”

Other border region Democrats also reacted with chagrin. U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who represents a district in the Rio Grande Valley where the initial construction is slated to begin, said Monday that the wall is “an antiquated idea” and an “unproductive exercise.”

“It is my hope that President Trump will abandon campaign rhetoric and instead consider implementing a virtual wall comprised of cameras, sensors, and aerostats as well as boots on the ground,” Gonzalez said.

Cuellar, along with several White House officials, noted Monday that ultimately Congress controls spending, while the president’s role is largely limited to an annual formal budget request.

Low priority in Texas

Texas U.S. Senator John Cornyn has said the border wall “would rate very low” among Texans. He announced plans to chair a hearing on the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday in Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration. Cornyn also has called for infrastructure and technological improvements along the border, arguing that a physical barrier of the sort Trump has in mind would make “absolutely no sense” in some areas of Texas.

Trump’s budget, titled “A new Foundation for American Greatness” — an echo of his campaign theme — also calls for security upgrades short of the 30-foot-high barrier for which the administration already has bid out for prototypes.

The White House budget would allocate $239 million for aircraft, $202 million for vehicles, radios, weapons and other equipment, $197 million for surveillance technology, including towers, cameras, radars and sensors, $111 million for road construction and maintenance, and $109 million for inspection equipment at border crossings and ports of entry.

While the administration pursues an array of security measures at the border, White House officials made clear Monday that they intend to make good on one of the central promises of the Trump’s campaign. “That means bricks and mortar for a wall,” said Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney.

The Trump budget also proposes more than $300 million to recruit and hire additional border agents and immigration officers, including lawyers to handle expected eminent domain challenges from private land owners on the border.

The coming battle over the border wall also is likely to play out against the backdrop of massive cuts to domestic programs outlined Monday by Mulvaney and other administration officials. Most likely to be fought by Democrats is a proposed $616 billion reduction in Medicaid and children’s health insurance spending over the next decade.

Mulvaney said the cuts to Medicaid — the health program for the poor and elderly — would be based on GOP efforts to replace former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Obamacare replacement legislation recently passed by the Republican-led House would result in some $800 billion in Medicaid cuts, mostly to states that expanded the program under Obamacare.

‘Reform of welfare system’

Trump’s 10-year budget prescription also calls for $272 billion in cuts through what it calls a “reform of the welfare system.” That includes $193 billion in cuts to the food stamp program known as SNAP, and $21 billion in reductions in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

White House documents also call for $40 billion in savings over the next 10 years through reforms in the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, in large part by restricting access by requiring beneficiaries to provide social security numbers. Another $143 billion would come out of federal student loans.

While domestic programs are slashed, Trump is requesting $54 billion, or 10 percent, more for defense than the current levels set by Obama.

White House officials said the budget does not cut “core” Social Security or Medicare benefits, making good on another Trump campaign promise. In a nod to first-daughter Ivanka Trump’s initiative promote working women, the budget also calls for $25 billion in new spending over the next decade to fund a nationwide paid parental leave program.

The White House maintained that, all told, Trump’s budget would balance within the next decade. That promise assumes tax reforms that generate 3 percent annual growth in the national economy, a substantial uptick from current estimates of 1.9 percent.

While administration critics are skeptical, Mulvaney said the higher growth rate would be achievable under Republican plans to cut business taxes and reduce regulations. He also defended Trump’s proposed domestic spending cuts, calling them part of a “taxpayer first” budget.

“It is written through the perspective of people who pay taxes, as much as the people who benefit,” said Mulvaney, arguing that the administration is targeting safety net programs it deems wasteful and ineffective. “We are not going to measure success by how much money we spend. We’re going to measure success by how many people we help.”