UPDATED!!
President Donald Trump said Friday that he’s considering using military resources to finish construction of his long-promised border wall instead of relying on Congress to fund the project through the Homeland Security Department’s budget.
He also wouldn’t eliminate the possibility of a government shutdown if Democrats continue to confound his efforts to appropriate money for the project on the U.S.-Mexico border.
‘We have two options,’ he told DailyMail.com aboard Air Force One as he flew from Billings, Montana to Fargo, North Dakota. ‘We have military, we have homeland security.’
He was asked specifically about using the Army Corps of Engineers as a taxpayer-funded construction crew.
Trump said he would prefer to fund the ambitious construction ‘the old-fashioned way – get it from Congress – but I have other options if I have to.’
He’s seeking about $25 billion….
(Originally posted in March 2018)
Here is an update due to some discussion on my Facebook for the skeptics. This first article excerpt from THE HILL dated December 2011:
The Obama administration won’t be bound by a gun-control ban in the $1 trillion spending bill for 2012, the president said Friday.
The funding provision for the federal Health agency says that “none of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.” The language aims to ban taxpayer dollars from supporting gun-safety research.
“I have advised the Congress that I will not construe these provisions as preventing me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibility to recommend to the Congress’s consideration such measures as I shall judge necessary and expedient,” Obama said in a statement as he signed the bill into law…..
And this comes from POPULIST WIRE:
….It’s not an official ‘Federal Budget’. It’s an Omnibus bill…not a Budget…He outsmarted them again…Congress basically screwed themselves by not passing a Budget…
Per the Constitution…the President must adhere to a Budget set forth by Congress and direct the expenditures as provided therein.
This is another one of those big Porkulus Bills, like they gave Obama for 8 years. This is not a Budget..
An Omnibus Spending Bill may have some ‘instructions’ as to how the money will be spent…but Obama ignored them. He spent the money, or didn’t spend it, however, he wanted to. And Congress didn’t do a thing about it! Because they couldn’t..”
As some suspected Trump had an “Ace up his sleeve”. Sunday on Social Media, the President verified that he had indeed kept his promise to stay focused on the “Building the Wall”….
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Democrats View of Trump’s Game |
Donald’s Real Game |
The morning after Trump signed the ominous OMNIBUS bill, a friend and I were very disappointed, to say the least. Below is our conversation… and let me say, I was wrong and not in tune with what this business man was after. And he was after getting his way because he loves America. My buddy is the orange boxes, I am the light colored boxes:
And it is that “what if” at 10:53am that got me thinking that Trump just may have bitch-slapped that evil grin on Schumer’s face off! And speaking for myself as an Evangelical conservatarian, I am reinvigorated — greatly.
How I now see it… The Omnibus Bill is a temporary spending procedure to keep the government funded for a while (I don’t know how long? 6-months? a year?). It was a mess of funding every pet project the Dems wanted to continue to fund, like Planned Parenthoood, NPR, etc. The bill may have even increased spending in some of these areas. But again, this is a t-e-m-p-o-r-a-r-y fix, and can be revisited in the future. It has to be.
A REAL BUDGET passed by the Congress and signed into law has to allocate money specifically to earmarked results — so if monies were said to go to the “a”, they couldn’t then be used for “a(i)”. So the monies allocated to these projects are more “malleable,” so-to-speak. Especially if the executive “declares” something that this office has power over. Congress would have a much rougher go at it, as they would have to collectively agree on what they have authority over, and THAT ain’t happening anytime soon.
So Trump’s Monday Tweet was as follows:
The “M” me thinks (hat-tip to Rush Limbaugh BTW) is the military. What that Tweet shows are the two requirements needed to use the military funds and know-how to build a large portion of the wall. A humanitarian emergency (crime, rape, drugs, etc. — related to the border and at the border) as well as a national security threat (terrorists being able to easily enter through our Southern border).
And walla, the ARMY Core of Engineers can get to work.
And he knew this from the get-go.
So 5-hours before he signed the bill he said he was going to veto it. Naw, that was a head-bob and weave. After he signed it he said never again. That is because he got what he wanted/needed.
The graphic to the right is for me: “Oh ye [me] of little faith.”
I could imagine this happening behind closed doors:
Schumer and Pelosi and others are in a private “backroom” gloating, having martinis and a few smoking cigars. Schumer’s aid walks in unannounced and comes over to Schumer, he bends down and whispers something in his ear. Schumer looking perturbed, being the egotistical ass he is, out loud says they put an iron-clad aspect in the bill to not pour concrete with the 33-million they allocated to “Trump’s wall.” He was shooed from the room.
- * laughter from the back of the room is heard* and murmurs of how they will make sure unions get the job… and then the 33-million will only get them a couple miles of fence with all the overtime.
A few minutes later Pelosi’s aid walks in unannounced and rushes over to Pelosi and whispers something in h-e-r ear. She laughs and shoos her out of the room. Schumer asks what that was about. Pelosi said that Trump is planning on using the 33-million to grade the land for the wall to prepare the building he will access from the military budget.
Laughter and small talk turns to heads tilting and serious debate. Aids are told to bring in precedence and a legal team.
What was once a happy and giddy time soon turned into wailing and gnashing of teeth.
My Tweet regarding the 33-million the Dems gave Trump:
Even if the above is not true to the “tee”… it has to be true in some respect. The Democrats got played. And I bet they are pissed! So are the spineless GOPers! (A two-fur one)
Trump strengthened the military greatly, and he can now come at North Korea and Iran with a stronger military and a bigger bargaining chip — and keep China’s ambitions with their Navy to a minimum. And, he gets his wall. AND he routed the Dems. Awesome! I am not worthy: