But, but, but…Mexico was going to pay for that!
A Republican congresswoman, Representative Diane Black (R- TN), has just introduced a bill to create a “border wall trust fund” that would allow people to donate their hard earned salaries to building President Trump’s much-hyped physical barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The concept of crowdfunding a public works project is unique unless you’re smart enough to realize that every public works project in the country is crowdfunded through the traditional term for the idea: taxes.
Since Republicans are seemingly allergic to the very word “taxes,” this rebranding should help with the marketing of the idea to Black’s GOP colleagues.
The Border Wall Trust Fund Act would “allow the Secretary of the Treasury to accept public donations to fund the construction of a barrier on the border between the United States and Mexico, and for other purposes,” an article on The Hill reported.
When Rep. Black, who is also a candidate for Tennessee governor, appeared on Fox News to discuss her proposed bill even host Harris Faulkner couldn’t help but ask: “What happened to Mexico paying for it?”
“I would like for Mexico to pay for that, and I’m not close enough to the administration to see what kind of pressure they’re putting on them,” said Black, who is running for governor in Tennessee.
Well, Rep, Black, you see the president hasn’t had the time to press Mexico, which has vehemently sworn that it will never put up a penny to fund Trump’s “nativist” (A/K/A racist) priorities, on the issue because he’s too busy trying to prosecute his own FBI and Justice Department over their investigations into his criminal activities.
Still one could look at Rep. Black’s proposal from several different angles, and in some views the idea looks better than when initially encountered. Unlike taxes, this Border Wall Trust Fund would be voluntary, meaning that anyone who disagrees with the idea of a border wall won’t be forced to pay for it. Defense Department Trust Fund, anyone?
The other potentially positive outcome from a bill such as this is that in creating a list of donor names and contact info, a centralized database of American racists would be created for the first time.
While such a database wouldn’t be all-encompassing, as the less wealthy racists may not have the money to contribute to the fund, it would still be either a useful document for a future government intelligence agency to access or a mighty deterrent to prevent paranoid right-wingers from ever contributing to the fund to begin with, undermining its effectiveness.
While Rep. Black may not have thought through all of the implications of her bill, she says that she and her husband would be the first to contribute. Her motivation stems from a desire to see the wall put up as soon as possible, saying that while President Trump has “built his case and hopefully in future funding there will be more funding for the wall, but why not have multiple sources so we can have the wall done faster?”
One can only be grateful that, with Rep. Black leading in the polls for the Republican gubernatorial primaries in Tennessee, this may well be her last few months in Congress. Let’s crowdsource donations to her Democratic opponent and get her out of government altogether.
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