Deal reached to avert new US government shutdown

... They tentatively agreed to far less money for President Donald Trump's border wall than the White House's $US5.7 billion ($NZ8.4b) wish list, settling for a figure of nearly $1.4 billion, according to congressional aides. The funding measure is through the fiscal year, which ends on 30 September.

The agreement means 88km of new fencing - constructed through existing designs such as metal slats instead of a concrete wall - but far less than the 350km the White House demanded in December. The fencing would be built in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. The agreement yielded curbed funding, overall, for ICE detention beds, which Democrats promised would mean the agency would hold fewer detainees than the roughly 49,000 detainees held two days ago, the most recent date for which figures were available. Democrats claimed the number of beds would be reduced to 40,520.

But a proposal to cap at 16,500 the number of detainees caught in areas away from the border - a limit Democrats say was aimed at preventing overreach by the agency - ran into its own Republican wall.

Democrats dropped the demand in the latest round of talks, and the mood in the Capitol improved markedly.

Mr Trump met earlier today with top advisers in the Oval Office to discuss the negotiations. He softened his rhetoric on the wall but ratcheted it up when alluding to the detention beds issue...

The deal that has evidently been put together by Democrats and Rinos serves three purposes for the Rinos: 1. Avoiding any real extension of the wall; 2. Forcing the President into a lose-lose predicament; 3. Avoiding a government shutdown.

Rinos in the Senate are actually in the majority there. One would be astonished at the number of Republicans who have lower Conservative Review (CR) approval ratings than some Democrats!

1. For reasons expressed in a previous reply ( http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3722962/posts?page=129#129 ) Many Republican senators, read Rinos, are simply not going to take any political risk whatsoever in support of a wall nor will they take any perceived political risk in support of Donald Trump. Hence, little Republican support for the wall. 2. Many Rino Republican senators are delighted to see the president in a political predicament because their allegiance is not to his office, not to him as titular head of the Republican Party, not to Donald Trump personally and certainly not to Donald Trump's populist message. To the contrary, their constituency is not the people who elect them but the donor class. To the degree that Donald Trump is neutralized, their real constituents are content.

3. Mitch McConnell has long stated his intractable opposition to any government shutdown. He is often said that a shutdown would not be permitted. His message to the people he governs is that the purpose of government is to govern, the best way to govern is to compromise, read accommodate. Therefore, a government shutdown represents the breakdown of good government. His message is a cynical misrepresentation of the desires of the donor class contrived for the benefit of the voting public. Do not forget, Mitch McConnell owes his position as leader of the Senate to the fact that he can fund the campaigns of many senators or, conversely, he can fund the campaigns of senators' opponents-and he has done so. Mitch McConnell's constituency is the donor class, the rest is all posturing.

President Trump is in a box because he is forced to a choice. If he fails to oppose this sham compromise to the imperative of border security, he will unquestionably forfeit the support of much of his base and jeopardize his chances of reelection.

On the other hand, if he opposes this sham compromise, as he most likely will, he will do so in an effort to head off the Senate from approving the compromise. It is a given that the Democrat house will approve the compromise, precisely because it puts the president in this dilemma. If his opposition to the compromise fails to hold the Senate, his predicament then will be whether to veto the compromise which would necessarily precipitate another shutdown of the government, for which he will be blamed by many in the media and many in his own party because he will have rejected a compromise acceptable to his own party.

These realities will have been plain to the senators who fashioned this compromise and will be equally plain to the senators in his own party who might voice their approval of the compromise. Yet they cut the deal.

We conservatives should take a look at this entire wall issue and extend our horizon to consider how it is that the president is put so often into this kind of dilemma by the Rinos of his own party. Should we confine our indignation to this issue or should we be looking at a solution to the structural problem which creates these lose-lose predicaments so often?

"Should we confine our indignation to this issue
or should we be looking at a solution to the structural problem
which creates these lose-lose predicaments so often ?"

We should express our indignation very loudly.

"Rinos, are simply not going to take any political risk whatsoever in support of a wall
nor will they take any perceived political risk"

These RINOs need to be called out BY THEIR NAMES, in a VERY PUBLIC way, and need to be rooted out in the PRIMARIES.
Only AFTER we un-employe these barriers to real progress, will we get anything done.
The solution to the current situation can only be resolved by an Executive Order declaring a National Emergency and funding the wall.
Then we're for a long court battle that may have to be resolved by Trump telling any opposing judges to "Go pound sand !"
They have no authority to enforce their rulings, as has been proven many years ago.

But sooner or later, we'll have to use the 2nd Amendment for what it was truly designed for,
and that's to remove tyrants from our government.

I agree with you on both counts, Trump should declare an emergency and build the wall, he should veto any continuing resolution. Why has Trump not declared an emergency already? Undoubtedly because he does not have sufficient support of the senators in his own party. Although he needs a vetoproof support level in either house or Senate to withstand an override attempt of is veto in the unlikely event that Congress withdraws support of the emergency declaration, coming close would mark a failure which would jeopardize his reelection and grease the rails of impeachment.

As to a veto of continuing resolutions, which Trump threatened to do and has failed to follow through on, we fiscal conservatives ought to recognize that the president never campaigned on balancing the budget. Indeed he never campaigned on cutting any entitlement-except perhaps Obama care to the degree that is considered an entitlement.

So the question has to be asked, how committed is Trump personally to cutting spending. He has an uncanny ability to read the public and he knows that conservatives rarely get elected by telling the people to eat their spinach when their Democrat opponents are promising they will keep the music playing.

The reason for this is that there is no accountability for deficits or debt because we are simply printing money. Please see:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3723710/posts?page=122#122

"Why has Trump not declared an emergency already ?"

I guessed that he was just keeping his word and allowing them the full 3 weeks to come up with a solution.

"... how committed is Trump personally to cutting spending."

Good question.
And being from New York City, probably not very much.

I agree that Trump can read a crowd and and agree that we're printing money out of 'thin air' with nothing to back it up.
Sooner or later, our creditors are going to dump dollars in a major way.

I sunk the majority of my Thrift Savings Plan away from the government's control and into precious metals.
So far, I'm not doing very well with it, but I'm not losing my assets either.

As to your comment on The Myth of Abundance, I'll wait until I'm not so tired and can absorb it.
But at first glance or a scan read, it looks to be worth my time.

Between my Bible, and my 1967 Boy Scout handbook, I believe that we really don't need very much to live.
However our wants for living are an entirely different subject.

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