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WADE JODUN
Mill Hall
As far as I am concerned, Democrats, Republicans, Trump, Pelosi, and federal government agencies all have one thing in common: They lie.
Now that the federal government shutdown is over - at least temporarily - I'm seeing a number of articles talking about federal agencies reporting how much damage they incurred during the shutdown. I've worked inside these federal agencies. There's a reason for this: the more damage they report, the more money they get from Congress and the President to fix it. They're feathering their own nest at your expense. Keep in mind, during a shutdown, these federal agencies have full discretion as to which employees they keep on duty and which they furlough. Any furloughed employee may be called back at any time should the agency deem it necessary. So, the National Park Service could have simply recalled maintenance workers or park rangers if garbage was piling up or if vandalism and property damage was becoming and issue. Agencies that report research was set back due to the shutdown could have deemed those researchers essential and never left the research lapse.
But the truth is federal agencies want to be able to report these sorts of losses and damage so the public doesn't get the perception that you can close large parts of the government without an impact. During the 2013 shutdown, myself and the facilities and engineering group with whom I worked could have remained at work because our salaries were paid for by what are deemed as "no year funds."
Therefore, our salaries were covered, and our work could have continued. But I was told to send the engineering group home because the Obama Administration wanted the American public to feel as much pain from the shutdown as possible.
Here's the truth: it's to the advantage of federal agencies to send workers home, allow damage to occur and to even over-state how much damage truly occurred because it's likely to result in increased funding. It's very common for federal agencies to drastically overstate things like their maintenance backlog because it leads to increased funding requests from the President and to increased appropriations from Congress. For example, the Department of Interior routinely reports a maintenance of backlog of $12-13 billion. In 2017, I worked in D.C. and served on a federal government workgroup attempting to verify this backlog. We found nearly 50% of the reported backlog could not be substantiated. Every year Congress appropriates $500 million to the Interior Department for maintenance because of the sizeable backlog- a backlog that is over-inflated and of which half can't be verified. Recently Congress has been talking about increasing that appropriation to $1.3 billion annually. Those are your taxpayer dollars being used to address a falsified backlog. Worse yet, I've reported it. Congress doesn't care.
But it's not only federal agencies that lie. Let's look at the President's claims about the wall. Candidate Trump repeatedly said during his campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall. Once elected, he shifted that burden to the American taxpayer. President Trump continues to claim publicly that his 2,000-mile-long wall will cost about $5-6 billion. However, his own Department of Homeland Security sent him an internal report in February 2017 that put the cost at $22 billion. The President continues to tout that building a wall will reduce drug traffic and crime.
Trump claimed that walls constructed near El Paso turned it from being one of the most dangerous cities in the country to one of the safest overnight. The truth is, three years before the border fence construction near El Paso began, the city already had the third lowest violent crime rate of any major U.S. city with a population over 500,000, and it has had the lowest murder rate of the six largest cities in Texas for decades.
The President's claims and promises? All lies.
Heroin, fentanyl, synthetic opioids, methamphetamines, and marijuana are all smuggled into the U.S. But the majority of these drugs aren't being smuggled in the backpacks of immigrants sneaking through the desert. They are being smuggled in by boat, car, and airplane at already patrolled ports of entry. I say a $20 billion wall won't put a dent in illegal immigration or drug smuggling. Where walls exist, drug smugglers and human traffickers use tunnels to get under them. In April 2016, border patrol officials discovered one tunnel that ran more than half a mile from Tijuana to San Diego and was equipped with ventilation vents, rails, and electricity. Some of these tunnels are 30 feet deep. Altogether, between 1990 and 2016, 224 tunnels have been unearthed at the U.S.-Mexico border. Drug smugglers are also increasingly using ultralight aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, and drones to air drop drugs on the other side of the wall. But even if the land border were to become much more secure it would only intensify the trend toward smuggling goods as well as people via boats that sail far to the north to the California coast.
But Pelosi and the Democrats aren't any better. In one breath, Pelosi says we don't need a wall and that building the wall is immoral. Yet, she's willing to add 75 federal judges to adjudicate cases of undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border. If the number of cases are so substantial that 75 full-time judges are needed, that's a lot of folks crossing the border without permission. If Pelosi's argument is that a wall is an immorality why, then, isn't she arguing for a dismantling the 700 miles of wall and physical barriers that already exist?
Is anything that impedes illegal immigration immoral? How can you declare a wall or a barricade that impedes illegal immigration as immoral but be ok with beefing up armed border patrols that serve the same function?
And why, suddenly, did Democrats become so opposed to a wall? When the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was passed, Obama, Clinton, Schumer and 23 other Democratic senators voted in favor of the act and it passed in the Senate by a vote of 80 to 19. It seems Pelosi's statement is less about beliefs and facts and more about rallying the support of the far-left wing of her party, many of whom support open borders and the abolishment of ICE.
It's easy to understand, given nearly 50% of Mexicans live in poverty, that many come here looking for the promise of a better life. We can certainly empathize with their plight. It's even a logical step to provide a path to citizenship for the DACA recipients who've been here for decades, have no criminal record, have a job, pay taxes, are enrolled in college, and have built a lives here. But we also have laws that govern immigration. Why would we allow those who continue to come here illegally, if caught, to remain here or even jump to the head of the line?
Let's not forget there are people who have waited years to legally immigrate. Given the problems we face as a nation, it's hard to even see how the wall ranks among the top ten. The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that 40,000 veterans are homeless and almost 1.5 million veterans live in poverty. That is immoral. All too often the very government that puts those veterans in harm's way forgets about them once they have returned home. That is immoral. The National Assessment of Educational Progress recently issued a Nation's Report Card showing 60 percent of graduating high school seniors are not considered college or career ready.
That is immoral. Big pharmaceutical companies have bribed doctors to over-prescribe opioids and helped create a crisis that tears apart families, drains county government coffers, and annually costs 90,000 American's their lives. That is immoral. Social Security is in crisis and if we don't fix it; 14 years from now, tens of millions of seniors who faithfully invested in the program over a lifetime of hard work will be thrown into poverty. That is immoral. According to Harvard Medical School and the American Journal of Public Health, 45,000 annual deaths in the U.S. are associated with lack of health insurance. That is immoral. Both parties have done nothing to seriously abate climate disruption which, if not soon addressed, will become irreversible, lead to mass starvation, and alter the course of life here on earth. That is immoral.
But the only thing politicians are talking about is a wall. That is immoral.
As voters, what are we to do when both parties as well as our government agencies consistently lie to us and ignore the real issues.