Funding border wall is not a complex issue

I believe that the funding of building a border between the U.S. and Mexico is not a complex issue. When Donald Trump was running for president, his campaign promise was that he would build a border wall and that Mexico would pay for the wall. This is all public record.

Once he was elected, Mexico said that it would not pay for the wall. There were options: One would be that he could fund the wall and subrogate Mexico to reimburse the cost — we believe that he could fund this, but no tax records were ever made public; the other would be for funders of his campaign to do the same and to subrogate Mexico to reimburse the cost.

Nowhere in his campaign promises were that the American people were to be responsible to pay for the wall. Now, we have a government shutdown for no reason. The first two issues should be be addressed and resolved and we should move on. We can build a very secure wall — but not at the expense of taxpayers dollars. TRISH BYRNES

Wilkins the convenient EZPass, has likely not even noticed the periodic rate increases unless he or she continues to go back and keep track of the automatic toll figures on past credit card statements — clever.

The article also mentions that the required $400 million annual payments to PennDOT (ending in a few years) are a major component of the turnpike agency’s $6.1 billion debt. Interesting to note that if the $12.8 billion lease payment would have been set aside in an interest-bearing account at a modest rate of just over 3 percent, it would have provided this $400 million annual payment forever (and the commission would not have incurred this level of debt, and Pennsylvania would still have the $12.8 billion).

Finally, I would urge interested residents to go back and read some of the warning “comments” made by some Pennsylvania citizens and politicians at the time, warning us of the impending doom of rising fares to be imposed by a greedy private company. KARL KIMMICH Richland