The proposal, which includes a $2 billion down payment on Mr. Trump’s signature border wall, is one of the single largest investments in the president’s budget plan. Yet experts say it appears only to scratch the surface of what Mr. Trump has pledged, and highlights the difficulty of translating campaign promises into a workable, governing reality.
“It’s easy to promise things until you have to pay for them,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, the director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security. “It is certainly an attempt to begin to carry out what he promised.”
Mr. Trump is proposing to pay for his border security plan by marshaling savings from across the federal government. To what extent it is ultimately funded will depend in large part on Congress, which makes spending decisions based on the president’s proposals.Continue reading the main storyAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyDemocrats have pledged to fight tooth and nail against the wall and stepped-up immigration enforcement. That means that funding is likely to come down to how much political capital the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill is willing to spend on a project they have tried to downplay, despite Mr. Trump’s urgings.
