Good Idea on 'The Wall:' Demand Funding For Physical Barriers That Congress Has Already Approved

The news media and punditocracy were abuzz yesterday over the contentious Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer regarding government funding and immigration.  With a partial federal shutdown looming, each actor in the made-for-TV drama preened and flexed, as barbs flew back and forth.  This may have been the best retort from POTUS: 

"Elections have consequences" is a favorite aphorism of the winning party, but it's interesting that Schumer was the one to repeat it here.  His party just lost seats in the chamber he represents, and the president he was chiding unexpectedly won a national election two years ago on the central promise of building a border wall.  Did Democrats accede to that electoral "consequence"?  Of course not.  They've refused every offer from the White House on immigration, the most visible of which was quite reasonable and generous, in my view.  In a sane world, construction would already be underway on 700-1,000 miles of physical barriers along the southern border, DREAMers' normalized legal status would be formalized, the flawed "diversity visa lottery" would be reformed or abolished, and we'd be shifting to a more sensible merit-based legal immigration regime, much like the Brits and Canadians have implemented.  Instead, we're stuck at a bipartisan impasse.  And now we're on the brink of a partial shutdown because the two sides can't even agree on $5 billion for border security funding. 

As a minor digression, a quick point: Whenever a "government shutdown" is pending -- the politics of which usually (but not always) cut against Republicans -- it's important to note that it's at worst a partial shutdown.  Much of the federal government could and would carry on, unaffected, for long periods of time.  In this particular context, it would be even more 'partial' than is typically the case because the Republican Congress passed more appropriations bills through regular order in 2018 than had been achieved in any of the last 22 years.  So even if this shutdown moves forward, much of the federal government has already been fully funded, including defense.