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
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.