The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

$ 1.4 B for fencing is not $ 5.7 B for a wall

No matter how some media try to save the Duce's and the Republicans' faces.

Budget deal allows far less money than Trump wanted for wall

The story below this absurd headline says the money is for conventional fencing.

Not a penny for wall.

The agreement means 55 miles (88 kilometers) of new fencing — constructed through existing designs such as metal slats instead of a concrete wall — but far less than the 215 miles (345 kilometers) the White House demanded in December. 

The fencing would be built in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

It's not just AP.

Others, too, are calling it "wall money" in their lying headlines, and fencing money in the stories themselves.

But not everybody is playing around with fig-leaves.

Trump Likely to Accept Defeat on Wall Funding – and Claim He’ll Get His Money Elsewhere

After a brief moment when it looked like negotiations were breaking down as the deadline for avoiding a second government shutdown approached, a deal seems to be falling into place. 

And by any normal measure, it represents a humiliating defeat for Donald J. Trump, as the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake observes:
The deal as laid out does include some border fencing — $1.375 billion worth, or 55 miles. 
That’s well shy of the $5.7 billion and 200 miles in wall funding he demanded that led to the shutdown, but it’s not nothing. 
Trump could argue that he got something out of the 35-day government closure. 
But only if you ignore two very important things. 
One is that this compromise includes a concession to Democrats, too: a reduction in the number of detention beds … 
But the bigger issue is this: 
The amount of funding is actually shy of the original deal Republicans and Democrats reached last year that Trump rejected. 
At that time, the spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security included $1.6 billion for 65 miles of fencing, both slightly more than the current tentative deal.

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