President Trump has quite a few options to get the wall built and not all of them require Congress to get on board.
He can declare a national emergency and bypass Chuck Schumer’s two years of obstruction – the Democrats like to say Trump had two years and both houses of Congress and he couldn’t get the wall but they are being disingenuous as Trump never had 60 votes in the Senate.
The problem with declaring a national emergency and demanding funds from Congress is that Trump will end up in court and he may lose, based on the precedent regarding Truman the steel mills.
That said, Trump just unveiled a wrinkle on that plan and it will bypass Congress to get the wall funded. Rember we already have hundreds of miles of fence and Trump only wants the wall where needed.
So after he declares a national emergency, he can take money from unspent portions of the Army Corps of Engineers budget, who are on board and have already started planning where to build, and Chuck and Nancy can try to stop him.
From NBC News: President Donald Trump has been briefed on a plan that would use the Army Corps of Engineers and a portion of $13.9 billion of Army Corps funding to build 315 miles of barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the briefing.
The money was set aside to fund projects all over the country including storm-damaged areas of Puerto Rico through fiscal year 2020, but the checks have not been written yet and, under an emergency declaration, the president could take the money from these civil works projects and use it to build the border wall, said officials familiar with the briefing and two congressional sources.
The plan could be implemented if Trump declares a national emergency in order to build the wall and would use more money and build more miles than the administration has requested from Congress.
Under the proposal, the officials said, Trump could dip into the $2.4 billion allocated to projects in California, including flood prevention and protection projects along the Yuba River Basin and the Folsom Dam, as well as the $2.5 billion set aside for reconstruction projects in Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from Hurricane Maria.
Trump was informed that the Army Corps could build 315 miles of border wall in about 18 months, according to officials familiar with the planning. The barrier would be a 30-foot bollard-style wall with a feature designed to prevent climbing, the officials said.
The Corps would focus first on the heavily trafficked border areas along the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, in San Diego and El Centro in California, as well as Yuma, Arizona.
