Government Shutdown: Money Money Everywhere But Not a Drop for a Wall

By Larry Elder This is not our first partial government shutdown. Somehow someway from 1976 through 2017 the nation has survived 18 shutdowns the longest lasting 21 days. In this case President Donald Trump insists that the next budget deal contain $5 billion to construct a wall on part of our southern border with Mexico. Trump say the Democrats is unwilling to compromise. But when he asks for only $5 billion for a project with a U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimated price tag of $18 billion spent over 10 years that is already a compromise. That $18 billion amounts to 0.0338 percent of the $53 trillion the Congressional Budget Office estimated the federal government will spend from 2018 through 2027. For a few days Trump dropped his demand for wall funding angering much of his base. Did the likely next speaker of the house Rep. Nancy Pelosi D-Calif. and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer D-N.Y. applaud Trumps bipartisanship and his willingness to reach across the aisle? Hardly. Left-wing cable pundits mocked Trump as having caved on a campaign promise due to the supposedly shrewd negotiating skills of the Democrat leadership. A Vanity Fair article called Trumps retreat a capitulation. When Trump reversed his reversal the same critics promptly accused him of yielding to the demands of right-wing television and radio hosts. The late President George Herbert Walker Bush knew the feeling. When he violated his no new taxes pledge did Dems praise this compromise as an example of how both sides can work together to get things done on behalf of the American people? Please. James Carville Bill Clintons 1992 campaign manager used it against Bush calling it the most famous broken promise in the history of American politics. The media has taken to calling the southern border wall Trumps wall or his wall as if it were devoid of usefulness in slowing down illegal border-crossers. When Republicans began calling President Barack Obamas health care plan Obamacare some Democrats called this personalization racist. MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry said The word (Obamacare) was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man to render him inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments. Would these be the same wealthy white men who in the 1990s referred to Hillary Clintons health care plan as Hillarycare? Some Democrats denounce the border wall as racist. Pelosi called the wall -- and Trumps plan for a path to citizenship for 1.8 million dreamers -- a hateful anti-immigrant scheme designed to advance the presidents agenda to make America white again. This pushes the lefts narrative that not only is Trump racist but so are the Republicans who voted for him. This attack has been effective. A recent Axios poll finds that 61 percent of Democrats believe Republicans are racist/bigoted/sexist while 31 percent of Republicans feel that way about Democrats. Beyond racist say many Democrats the wall is wasteful and ineffective. Rep. Ted Lieu D-Calif. said Democrats are certainly happy to talk about border security but were not going to build this stupid vanity wall of Donald Trumps with U.S. taxpayer dollars. He called the wall inefficient wasteful technology. Pelosi said: (The walls) the wrong thing to do. It doesnt work. Its not effective. Its the wrong thing to do and its a waste of money. News bulletin: Democrats base legislation on efficiency and effectiveness?! Fine lets examine the massive spending thats occurred since President Lyndon Johnsons so-called war on poverty an effort launched in the mid-60s. In the following five decades according to The Heritage Foundation taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion in this effort. The result? Poverty trending down in America before the mid-60s reversed itself. Poverty among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. Five years into Johnsons war Americas poverty rate declined to 12.1 percent. But within a few years poverty reversed course and increased to 15 percent where it has more or less remained. This war led to greater government dependency and increased fatherlessness as a growing number of single mothers in essence married the government. Has the war on poverty passed the efficiency test? Then theres Obamas nearly $1 trillion stimulus plan that failed to achieve its own unemployment reduction targets. Ditto his Cash for Clunkers Cash for Caulkers and green-tech programs which have cost taxpayers billions of dollars while failing to achieve their objectives. Obama after insisting he lacked authority used an executive order to create Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals -- even though immigration law is up to Congress. But Trump cant use $5 billion from this years $700 billion defense budget for a down payment on a border wall for national security the principal job of the commander in chief?