Oregon players arrive Wednesday at the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown for the finale of the college basketball tourney.
When Donald Trump visited Phoenix in August to make a major speech on immigration and border control, he promised that his promised border wall would be built “100 percent” by Mexico. But, that was then. Mexico is not being cooperative with the great negotiator now in the White House. So, lacking the pesos to pay for his promised barrier, Trump is asking Congress to pass the multibillion dollar cost of a border wall … to us. How would he do that? According to news reports, he would go after the middle class, the poor, the elderly, and to programs to preserve infrastructure and do research.
For example, Trump is asking for a cut of more than a billion dollars to the National Institutes of Health, which provides research grants on the kinds of illnesses that impact just about every American family in one way or another. Cancer, for example.
Then there is the half-billion dollars or so that was to have been used for transportation projects, providing repairs to rotting roads and rickety bridges. Housing programs also would be cut. As would grants to low-income college students. Along with about $3 billion in cuts to other education programs.
There would be cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the people who come to the assistance of Americans impacted by natural disasters such as hurricanes. Senior-citizen programs would see cuts. Assistance for programs that provide heating subsidies for the poor would see cuts. It goes on. That isn’t the way it was supposed to be, not according to promises made by Trump that go all the way back to 2015, when Trump first began his campaign and said, “I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me — and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” We did. During his major address in Phoenix last August, Trump said:
“Number one, are you ready? Are you ready? We will build a great wall along the southern border. And Mexico will pay for the wall. One hundred percent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it. And they’re great people and great leaders but they’re going to pay for the wall. On day one, we will begin working on intangible, physical, tall, power, beautiful southern border wall.”
His request to pass that cost — 100 percent — to Americans, isn’t going over particularly well in Congress. Including Republicans, such as Texas Sen. John Cornyn.
He said, “I think they’re becoming very aware of how hard the legislative process is. I look at it as a conversation.”
Others might look at it as a 100 percent broken promise.