President Trump’s first major promise in his campaign was that he was going to build a wall along the Mexican border of the United States. It would be 1,954 miles long and, according to his original campaign promise, up to 30 feet high. The entire physical cost of the wall will be around $5.7 billion. Trump tried to get a budget passed, but that resulted in the partial government shutdown. According to an article by USA Today on January 7, President Trump stated, “we can call a national emergency and build it very quickly.”
Many politicians, while campaigning, promise ludicrous things to gain votes so that they can win elections. Many people thought Trump’s border wall promise was just to gain votes from some radical conservatives and that he would never do it. Turns out, it wasn’t just an empty promise and he’s doing anything he can to gain funding for it. Trump wants to declare a national emergency because he doesn’t have funding to build the wall. What if there was an actual emergency, like a natural disaster? Since the government is shut down, there would be limited help, and if Trump is going to use the national emergency funds to build the wall, there would be no funds whatsoever to help the people in need. This is a gross misuse of the funds that are specifically for emergency situations. This whole problem of no funding for a giant wall is not a matter of a national emergency. It’s not even a big enough problem for a government shutdown. The fact that Trump is even considering this is terrifying to me. It shows that he doesn’t care where he gets the money, as long as he has it. This should be illegal, considering the fact that the national emergency fund isn’t for whatever the president wants.
Recently, there have been a lot of storms and natural disasters, like the California wildfires and hurricanes. The funds that Trump wants to use for his wall go to rebuilding communities that are devastated by these disasters. If all that money goes to the wall, there will be none left to help those in need, leading to an increase in homeless and unemployed people. He can’t do this, there will be so much backlash to it. He is trying to run this country like a CEO and not like a president. You can’t just move funds around willy-nilly, that’s not how our country works. You can’t just declare anything you want a national emergency. Hurricane Irma was a national emergency, not having enough money to build a wall is not.
