The entire fiscal year '18 appropriations process has been a
Republican exercise in sham accounting and wishful thinking: ignore
current law, jack up defense spending, and impose huge, unnecessary,
and detrimental cuts on domestic appropriations. When future students learn about congressional appropriations, this
episode should be exhibit A of what not to do. The four bills before us today are also full of objectionable and
unreasonable policy riders, including the ridiculous inclusion in the
rule of $1.6 billion to be spent on 74 miles of border wall. Nobody
would know it from the President's hysterical rhetoric, but there are
already 700 miles of fence along the border--vehicular fencing and
pedestrian fencing. I know about it because most of that fence was
built when I was chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriations
Subcommittee.
Keywords matched
border wall