Somewhere in drawing up the blueprint for making America great again, Donald Trump forgot about America's Best Idea. We can only hope it's a temporary oversight. As for Congress, well, the Republican leadership should know better. But at the moment, the inaugural blush is still fresh and House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are more than happy to kowtow to President Trump.
While the National Park Service's maintenance backlog only goes up, up, and up higher - it was a relatively modest $4.9 billion when President George W. Bush in 2001 said he would wipe it out in five years, and now is on the brink of $12 billion - President Trump this past week promised to build, at an estimated cost of $12 billion-$15 billion or more, a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in a bid to keep illegal immigrants out. Messieurs Ryan and McConnell, who the past eight years hated the mere thought of increasing the deficit and raising taxes, quickly jumped on board, even though there's no realistic plan for paying for the wall.
"We are moving ahead, as the speaker pointed out to our group yesterday, with a [supplemental bill of] roughly $12 [billion] to $15 billion," Sen. McConnell said Thursday. "So we intend to address the wall issue ourselves, and the president can deal with his relations with other countries."
And after that initial down payment, it's been estimated it will take about $500 million a year, or more, to maintain the wall.
Forgotten, ignored, or overlooked by the president and his Congressional supporters is that illegal immigration along the United States' southern border has been flat or declining, that Americans as a whole could care less about building said wall, and that one proposed solution to pay for the wall would be a 20 percent tax on Mexican goods ... that U.S. residents, not Mexico, would end up paying even though the president has said Mexico would pay for the wall.
According to the Pew Research Center, "(T)he number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. has stabilized in recent years after decades of rapid growth." More so, the researchers found, in recent years the most growth of illegal immigrants has come from Asia and Central America, while there also has been an increase from sub-Saharan Africa. And while the president's wall would run along the Texas and California borders with Mexico, in 2014 California, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Texas accounted for 59 percent of illegal immigrants.
You're going to need a bigger wall, Mr. President (with apologies to Steven Spielberg and "Jaws").
That $12 billion-$15 billion (plus a half-billion or so on annual maintenance) that the president wants to toss at a construction project that isn't needed or supported by John F. Kelly, his Homeland Security secretary, could be much better spent addressing health care here in the United States, bolstering education of our youth, fighting poverty or, yes, repairing the weary, aging infrastructure of the National Park System.
Economic studies have shown that $1 invested in the national parks generates $10 worth of economic activity. Think how many additional jobs and how much more economic growth would be created in every state of the nation by spending $15 billion on the National Park System's ailing infrastructure. Safety in the parks would be enhanced, too, and the Park Service finally could get on top of the maintenance backlog.
"Think what that $500 million a year could mean for the National Park Service,” Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, told me with that annual wall maintenance figure in mind. "These (parks) belong to all of us, so everybody could enjoy the benefits of that."
Would Messieurs Ryan and McConnell jump as high if President Trump announced he was going to wipe out the Park Service's maintenance backlog rather than build a wall?
We can only dream.
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Comments
Disagree with many of your arguments but agree with your conclusion. The wall isn't necessary.
Skip the wall and put the money into our National Parks. The benefits to the American People will be much greater.
Agreed, Harry. Nice piece, Kurt.
Political neutrality, please. Remember when you considered doing away with commenting because it was getting ugly?
One could argue that you have had 8 years to wipe out the backlog and there should be none. Another could argue that it could be picked up as infrastructure. Either way when one political party refuses to "come to the table" you can't complain about the food.
Political neutrality today is a confession. It is hoping that the tornado raging overhead won't disturb the cardboard box you're hiding under. Kurt is right both in his comments and in his conclusions, in my opinion.
Great article Kurt!! I agree with you. National Parks are very important.
Let's just call it The Great Wall National Monument.
How does the $100 million payoff to the Sierra Club to adopt an open borders agenda fit in with the discussion? Everything is getting politically bastardized.
I'm not sure I would agree that fixing our immigration problem is a lower priority than the NP needs, but agree the wall is a waste of money. Most illegal immigrants arrive legally and overstay their visas. A wall wont fix that. We have been kicking the immigration can down the road far longer than the NPS budget so I am in favor of fixing that first. Creating a path to citizenship and rewarding hard working honest immigrants with that path rather than looking the other way for those willing to break the law makes more sense to me.
Agree that the backlog of maintenance needs to be resolved. What irks me is that Obama continued to add more monuments, scenic byways, scenis rivers and other responsibilities to Interior and the NPS with resolving the maintenance problem. Do you think the boondoggle in Maine was free to the US Taxpayer? Regarding the wall on our southern border....... Trump is going to build it and you can be sure that one way or another Mexico will pay for it! There may be a tariff on imports but doesn't anyone get the fact that $60B is leaving the US each year in a trade deficit? Doesn't anyone get that the illegal and other immigrants are sending $B to their families so they can leave their contries and come here..... some legally and some otherwise?
Actually, hatrasfevr, the Maine monument shouldn't cost too much:
http://www.pressherald.com/2016/08/25/bangor-resident-to-head-katahdin-a...
Actually, Fevr, despite your words of comfort, most of us out here are not reassured that "one way or another" Mexico will pay for it. Any tariff/tax/fee on Mexican imports will merely pass on to the individual US consumer.
Rick, nice to see you recognize who actually pays corporate taxes. Putting a tariff on Mexican imports is a bad idea. Reform our tax and regulatory code would be a more effective solution to fixing the trade imbalance.
Eric - nice to see you occasionally recognize that I'm right.
The 12-15 billion dollars for a wall is just an estimate. It could cost three times as much and even more when anti-tunnel measures are added. Then you have that northern border with Canada. Building a wall across Glacier NP or the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota will be an interesting exercise for planners and engineers. Fortunately we have plans from the former DDR or East Germany. That could cut the costs although the aesthetics will be bad. Eminent domain will also cut the costs by providing private property owners a lower rate than negotiating would provide.
Border security is more important than NPS backlog of mismanagement at the moment. Mexican illegals are damaging lots of West coast parks with thier marijuana farms and killing our young people with thier smuggled heroin. The wall is a much higher priority.
Dumb - I served a 14 month tour in Korea, in the DMZ. A 4km wide zone stretching from sea to sea across the peninsula. When I was there is was about 20 years after the armistice, and both the north and the south had ample time to build walls and defences. Out in the DMZ there were free fire zones, where we shot at anything that moved, which if nothing else reduced the deer population. We routinely had firefights and the same no doubt continues today. Every inch of the DMZ had chain link fences, concertina wire, minefields, and electronic sensors still classified. At one point we spent days out pursuing half a dozen North Korean infiltrators who had come south to assassinate the president of South Korea. We killed all but one, and when we took him back up to the line and told him to show us how he got through he just walked up to the chain link fence and grabbed it in a certain place, and pulled a section of the fence out big enough to drive a 2-1/2 ton truck through.
With the swiss cheese that the land under the US/Mexico border is already is due tunnels, and the fact that Mexico will NEVER pay for the damn wall, good luck on "securing our borders" with your fantasy wall. It is a pure boondoggle and will do nothing to make America safer. If you do have personal border experience more insightful than mine I'd like to hear it.
Obama increased the height of the wall around the Whitehouse for improving security. Obama had a wall constructed around his new home in DC to improve security. Israel constructed a wall that greatly improved security.
Improving the security of our southern border will benefit the US and Mexico, plus saving lives and protecting flora and fauna of our parks. Any rational and logical thinking person would see the benefits of a wall on the border.
There is an old truism about "If you count a dog's tail as a leg, the dog still only has four legs - saying it don't make it so."
The same truism applies to your self-flattering statement of " Any rational and logical thinking person would see the benefits of a wall on the border."
You really didn't read a word I typed, did you?
It always amuses me when someone from NC comments on border security. Are you afraid SC is going to invade? For those of us who live close to the border (45 miles for me), it's not that big a deal. Almost the entire Texas Congressional delegation, raging librtals as they are, oppose building the wall. It will be an economic and environmental disaster.
I live close to the border as well - the Canadian border. No one ever complains about bilingual French/English visitors, but most of them are rather pale. It is such a shock that the hue of the person is unspoken in these border security fetishists. "I'm not racist! It is just that [and blather ensues]".
Rick, how many of the pale bilingual French/English visitors are coming in illegally and taking American jobs and handouts? The wall (which I oppose) has nothing to do with the "hue of the person".
I don't know and neither do you. I don't know about either border on your questions and neither do you.
I spent a large amount of my professional medical career caring for immigrants, legal and otherwise, from dozens of nations. One thing I learned in helping them was that they are all people, with families, hopes, and pains, and incredible stories to tell when you listen.
My best guess is that not all that many of them are buying property in Breck, so your opportunities to get to know them one on one is limited.
The wall has everything to do with the hue of the person, and the man who proposed it has a long documeented history of racism against people of color. If you oppose it then your arguing with me only discloses you as a habitual partisan who can't pass up a dog fight.
Ive seen up close what a drunken illegal did to young woman a couple years ago. He took off from an accident to let her die and never seen again. I've talked with parents of heroine overdoses. It is a big deal. What we have been doing is not working.
Exact numbers no, but one measures in the millions (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/03/5-facts-about-illegal-im...) and the other probably not even in the thousands.
Actually we have a rather large population that have immigrated from the south, some legally, many illegally. I see them everyday in my business. They have become a major burden on our school and social welfare systems.
No, I am arguing because your accustions of "hue" and racism are complete BS. Just part of your and the rest of the left's attempt to create a boogie man because you can't actually argue the facts.
Well since NC is in the top quartile of illegal immigrants as a percent of the population, I think he has good standing to comment.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/02/...
Dumb - the same damn thing happens all the time from drunken rednecks, drunken business executives, drunken televangelists, and everything else. What you mention is a tragedy, one of a million similar tragedies. There are many moire immigrants paying taxes, going to grad school, raising kids and doing the dirty jobs you don't want to do yourself.
Illegals going to grad school? Those rednecks, executives and everyone else had to pay back society. The illegals disappear into the shadows. i voted for rule of law, you better get used to it.
Going to grad school and paying for it, and then being an educated member oif society.
We've always had laws, observed and broken. Just like now, with your guy trump breaking laws and the consitution left and right. What am I used to? I'm used to protecting society from no-impulse-control narcissistic sociopaths by putting them in a room with soft walls and lots of psychotropic medications. When Trump finally has his full psychotic break, you'll wish for people with my training.
Oh please, all of a sudden you have respect for the Constitution? Exactly what part of the Constitution did Trump violate?
Eric - insulting my respect for the Constitution, which I went to war to defend, is beyond the pale.
Just go away.
Exactly what part of the Constitution did Turmp violate?
Eric and others -
Start by working your way through this: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/01/he...
Total BS - The temporary hiatas isn't against any race or religion. There are 40 muslim countries non covered and this has no effect on US Citiizens regardless of race or religion. The is a common sense act aimed at insuring our vetting system is adequate. It is aimed at those countries that either don't cooperate with our vetting efforts or that do not have an adequate governmental infrasturture to cooperate.
BTW - Where was your whining when Obama did this to the Iraqis not for 90-120 days but for six months?
Hmm. Slate vs the Congressional Research Service (Library of Congress)
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R44743.pdf
Ok, we're going to let Constitutional law be tackled by other sites, so we're shutting this thread down and hope you'll seek out park stories to discuss.