Cruz sees way to fund Trump’s wall
Texan targets benefits to those in U.S. illegally
WASHINGTON — While President Donald Trump and top Hill Democrats hurtle toward a potential holiday shutdown over his longpromised border wall, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is backing a longshot plan.
He wants to cover the $25 billion cost by tightening rules so as to deny food stamps, tax credits and other federal benefits to people living in the country illegally.
The proposal, a fixture of conservative immigration policy, comes amid a standoff over Trump’s bid to win more wall funding from Congress before a Dec. 21 deadline for averting a government shutdown.
Cruz and his allies say further restricting welfare and tax benefits — most already are barred — would solve the White House funding dilemma.
Democrats argue it would shift the costs of an unneeded wall onto children, many of them living legally or born in America.
The proposal has faint hopes of resolving the wall standoff in a sharply divided Congress, but it stands as a symbolic marker of how deep the split remains on the issues of immigration and border security.
Trump clashed Tuesday with Senate Democratic
Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi in an unusual on-camera encounter at the White House.
The two sides remained far apart, with Trump telling the Democratic leaders he would be “proud to shut down the government over border security.”
So far, the Democrats’ offer has been the $1.6 billion bipartisan agreement reached earlier this year, far short of the $5 billion Trump wants for wall construction and border security in 2019.
They also have offered to continue the current $1.3 billion in wall funding for the next year.
“We gave the president two options that would keep the government open,” Schumer and Pelosi said in a statement. “It’s his choice to accept one of those options or shut the government down.”
With no agreement in sight, Trump also suggested in a series of tweets Tuesday that he might be willing to declare victory with the current collage of “newly built Walls, makeshift Walls & Fences, or Border Patrol Officers & Military.”
Republicans, who are losing their House majority at the end of this year, have sought to include more wall funding in a last-ditch spending package, though they haven’t identified a funding source.
Although most of the government is funded into 2019, there are a half-dozen departments and agencies hanging in the balance, including NASA and the Homeland Security Department, which covers money for the border wall.
Cruz, in a conference call with supporters Monday night, expressed deep reservations about the GOP’s end-game, saying it missed a chance to secure wall money with a filibuster-proof budget measure that could pass without any Democratic votes.
“Our leadership chose not to go down that road, and I think that was a serious missed opportunity” said Cruz, who has become one of the leading Senate backers of a border wall, which Trump originally promised would be paid for by Mexico.
Cruz added that he sees little chance the Democratic-controlled House will pony up money for the wall, which critics see as wasteful and unnecessary.
“In the next two years, I don’t anticipate a Nancy Pelosi Democratic House passing positive border security legislation,” Cruz said.
Cruz also expressed frustration with the current negotiations, saying rank-and-file lawmakers have been left out of the process.
“The way this operates, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer are negotiating this behind closed doors,” Cruz said, “they don’t tell the rest of us what’s happening.”
But with time running out on a year-end deal, Congress watchers see little chance of passing the Cruz-backed legislation targeting federal benefits and tax credits.
The bill involves highly controversial changes to the tax code and steep political obstacles.
The bill — introduced last week with Republican Sens. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Mike Rounds of South Dakota and John Kennedy of Louisiana — isn’t Cruz’s first attempt to scrounge up wall money. Last May, he filed a bill to use funds forfeited by alleged Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman Loera, known as “El Chapo.” That bill went nowhere.
Cruz and his allies say their “WALL Act” would more than cover the project’s proposed $25 billion price tag by closing “loopholes” they say provide welfare and tax benefits to people living in the country illegally.
The proposal comes on top of a Trump administration plan to restrict immigration benefits and citizenship opportunities to noncitizens who’ve received public benefits or government assistance.
As a general rule, undocumented immigrants, including “Dreamers” in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, are not eligible to receive government benefits such as food stamps, cash welfare payments, health care subsidies and nonemergency medical care.
Conservatives, however, long have argued that some illegal immigrants can claim certain types of earned income and child tax credits, either with invalid Social Security numbers or by using the Social Security numbers of their American-born children.
The new proposal would require parents claiming tax benefits to have their own work-eligible Social Security numbers.
The measure also would enhance verification procedures for people claiming citizenship to receive food stamps, welfare, housing, and other government benefits.
Together with increased fines on illegal border crossers and new penalties for visa overstays, the bill’s backers say it could save $33 billion over 10 years.
“If you want to receive food stamps and other benefits, then you should prove your citizenship,” Kennedy said in a statement.
While the bill targets tax credits and food assistance claimed by the low-income, undocumented workers, Houston Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee said those ultimately affected would be their minor children.
“Philosophically, it’s a stretch,” she said, “and that’s a mild word.”
Democrats and immigrant rights activists argue that funding a border wall is a poor trade for targeting children who can’t be held responsible for their predicament, including some of the estimated 126,000 Dreamers in Texas.
“Throwing $25 billion to fund a border wall that most Texans don’t want is a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars,” said San Antonio Democrat Joaquin Castro, the incoming chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “Cutting off health care and food assistance for kids and families to pay for a border wall across Texas makes even less sense.”
Some critics also have questioned the timing of the bill, noting its tax, health and Social Security provisions are too far-reaching and complex to iron out in the remaining two weeks of the current lame-duck Congress.
The Democratic-led House is even less likely to go along in the coming year.
“This is not a serious policy proposal,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based advocacy group. “This proposal summarizes the Republican approach to immigration policy. You think up every desperate idea that you can, and hope the American public isn’t paying attention.”
Jackson Lee, a ranking member of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees, called the plan “unworkable,” in part because many social safety net programs such as food stamps and Medicaid are administered jointly with the states.