January 23rd marks the 32nd day of the government shutdown. With the Democrat party in control of the House of Representatives and Republican Donald Trump as the commander in chief, there has been no agreement in government funding. President Trump and most of his Republican Colleagues are looking for $5 billion of the roughly $3.8 trillion to fund a wall across the roughly 2,000 mile southern border with the hopes of slowing illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug smuggling. Of course both parties would like to stop all three, however they are having a disagreement on how to do so. Therefore the government has been shutdown for just over a month. On the Republican side, democrats are being blamed for shutting down the government over what is considered “a sliver” of the budget (pictured below)
The line is said to be the $5 billion of the of the total budget of a roughly $5 trillion budget.
The argument is also made by the right-wing that the $5 billion of tax payer money would be worth the cost in the long run because illegal immigrants cost tax payers and the US roughly $54 billion per year (cost of services received – taxes paid per CNBC at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-how-much-does-illegal-immigration-cost-america-not-n950981 ).
On the other side, the Democrat party has claimed a wall would be a waste of tax payer dollars. Although Democrats have supported physical barriers and had spent 2.3 billion maintaining and building barriers along the border from 2007 to 2015, they feel as if the wall is unnecessary. (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/15/18177566/democrats-trump-wall-shutdown) According to the same Vox article, democrats are okay and willing on increased border security, however they will not accept a wall as the centerpiece of security.
The two parties have been in a stalemate since the beginning of the shutdown in December of 2018 thus causing the hold of federal worker paychecks. As of January 22nd, federal workers have missed only one paycheck (don’t get me wrong, I understand this is a lot to some if not most families) that was due January 11th of 2019. The next paycheck would be due Friday January 25th of 2019.
Regardless of the outcome, both parties have named illegal immigration as an issue. Former President Obama had labeled it as a problem in his 2011 state of the Union address (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Y1ExlzaWU), current speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi did the same in her first term as speaker (2007-2011) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZHddAyzLKk) as did Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential run. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/06/22/mitt-romneys-immigration-plan-the-full-text/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ad68ff0d2900)
Finally, the reason many believe Trump is holding his ground is because this is what he based his 2016 election on. Many analysts find it unlikely Trump could win again in 2020 (assuming he will run again) if he does not get his wall.