Republican Texas Rep.-elect Dan Crenshaw refuted Democrats’ claims on Wednesday that building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border is too expensive, but rather asserted that the caucus simply has an aversion to the idea of a wall.
“A wall is effective. It’s a crucial part of border security. I spent a whole career infiltrating places and when we come up upon a wall — it matters,” Crenshaw said on “Fox & Friends.” “We have to plan around it. It’s a mitigating factor if you’re trying to enter or cross from point A to point B.”
The House passed a stopgap funding bill on Dec. 20 that included $5.7 billion to construct a border wall, however, with a 51-seat majority, Republicans fell short of the necessary 60 votes needed to send it to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to kill the legislation on arrival in the Senate, and consequently, a government shutdown has been in effect since funding expired on Dec. 21.
“That typical argument we hear from Democrats that it doesn’t make sense, it’s too expensive, it’s medieval — well, I’d like to hear some reasoning behind that,” Crenshaw continued. “It’s not too expensive, it’s 0.1 percent of our entire federal budget … so it’s really not about the money for them.” (RELATED: Lindsey Graham Urges Trump To ‘Dig In And Not Give In’ To Get Border Wall Funding)
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The Texas politician also stated that the White House offered to meet Democrats halfway in order to cease the government shutdown. In a private meeting, the White House was willing to lower its request to only $2.5 billion, down from the $5.0 billion Trump initially demanded. Crenshaw noted that “Democrats are refusing to budge on this.”
“For them it’s about semantics. They hate the word ‘wall’ — they just hate it,” Crenshaw said. “For some reason they just don’t value this idea of border security. They don’t value the sanctity of our borders and that’s really problematic, especially for a border state like Texas. We’re on the front lines down there.”
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