I have to disagree about the cosmetic, just-for-show, items that were included in some of these bills. Both the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security said that such aids would not succeed in the absence of a physical barrier working in tandem with them. Indeed, it is rather obvious that such would be the outcome.
What makes you so sure that a physical barrier is necessarily going to stop illegal immigration?
Steel prototype for border wall cut through with saw, photo shows
They also tend to dig under the walls down in San Diego.
At best a wall might slow them down, but if they're intent on coming into the US illegally, a wall won't necessarily stop them.
Again however, most illegal aliens came here legally, they simply overstayed their visas, and most drugs come through existing ports of entry. It makes more sense IMO to focus our financial efforts on those issues rather than new walls.
I'm not *adverse* to spending *some* money one new walls, but 55 miles of new walls seems like *plenty* to me. It will take quite awhile to build and install 55 miles of new fencing anyway, so for a single year budget, the current budget seem highly appropriate to me.
The whole "emergency" claim seems like nothing more than a blatant attempt to circumvent the constitution which explicitly gives funding power to the legislative branch, not the executive branch, and it looks to be an attempt to appeal to his base.
If as he promised that Mexico would really pay for his wall, and/or he hadn't just given himself a 15 million dollar a year tax break, I might be more supportive of Trump's wall concept. As it stands, he certainly isn't willing to pay for it out of his pocket or his taxes, and all we're doing is putting the cost of the wall on top of the US debt, a debt that already exceeds 22 trillion dollars thanks in part to Trumps new tax breaks for the rich.
Even *if* his trade deal replacement for NAFTA results in some new funds from Mexico, it won't even pay for the interest on the new debt associated with 8 billion he's trying to spend now. He never really believed that Mexico would pay for his wall, and he's already got funding to work on adding more walls over the next year without trying to declare a national emergency. The courts will block it anyway, so it's really just political theater.