I am probably not the only Monitor reader who sometimes gets caught by an article that was missed when it was new. For me it’s most often when I am lighting the fire or, in this recent case, I was using newsprint to wash windows.
I was at first puzzled to see a yellowed headline reading, “Trump privately pushes for military to fund wall.” I thought, “That’s a fairly recent story. Why is the paper so yellowed.” I checked the date. March 28. Why have we recycled this paper already? March 28, 2018.
I read on to find that a year ago, Trump, peeved that the GOP-dominated Congress had dedicated only $1.6 billion to the border wall, had tried another tactic. He had asked Speaker Paul Ryan if he could divert funds dedicated to the military to build the wall. Ryan’s response was quieter than Pelosi’s but the same in the end; he didn’t act on the idea. So, as Trump tries to blame the present, more Democratic-leaning Congress for refusing to fund the wall, we can be thankful that Congress is asserting its responsibility to set spending priorities. Both the 115th and the current 116th Congresses have made it clear: The wall is not a major solution to border security. The wall is not a sensible or even feasible way to seal large sections of the southern border. In fact, our own former congressman, Chuck Douglas, pointed out in this paper that the wall could never be built across most of Texas because it would require using eminent domain to take huge amounts of private riverfront property.
DAVID ERIKSON
Weare