After meeting with President Trump to try to resolve the details of the final spending bill of the 115th Congress, soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of California stated, “Democrats will stand fast against the immoral, ineffective border wall.”
Likewise, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York threatened to shut down the government if funding for a border wall is part of the legislative package.
But back in 2006, 80 U.S. Senators, including Senator Schumer himself, along with Senators Obama, Biden, Clinton, Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, and many others supported a bill that authorized 700 miles of fencing on our southern border.
In the House, 64 Democrats also voted for the 700 miles of border fencing.
Hillary Clinton, who was critical of President Trump’s plan during the 2016 presidential campaign, also supported fencing along the border and bragged as recently as November 2015 about her previous votes as a senator on the issue.
At a campaign event in New Hampshire, a woman asked Clinton about securing the border from illegal immigrants, Clinton said: “Well, look I voted numerous times when I was a Senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in and I do think you have to control your borders.”
According to the RNC’s Mike Reed, other notable Democratic Senators who supported the legislation include Vice President Joe Biden (Del.), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y).
The RNC pointed to the vote in 2013 and a vote in 2006, where prominent Democrats voted in favor of a physical barrier along the southern border.
All 52 Democrats, plus Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Angus King, I-Maine, voted in favor of the 2013 bill, which died in the House. And in 2006, Democrats like then-Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Joe Biden, D-Del., and current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act, which would add “two layers of reinforced fencing, installation of additional physical barriers” to ports of entry along the southern border.
“They all voted for a border barrier –a hard physical border barrier back in 2006, the Secure Fence Act,” White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in January of this year, listing Obama, Clinton, and Biden. “So that’s a new position they apparently have if they’re opposed to any sort of [barriers].”
Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee has documented one of the worst cases of Democrat hypocrisy on border security. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein has become a very vocal member of California’s chorus of complaints about President Donald Trump’s border security agenda and a crackdown on illegal aliens.
But 23 years ago, wrote Walters, when Feinstein was running for her first full term in the Senate, she was singing a different tune.
Democrat Feinstein’s 1994 campaign aired a television ad, illustrated with shadowy figures, that accused Republican rival Michael Huffington of being soft on illegal immigration.
“While Congressman Huffington voted against new border guards, Dianne Feinstein led the fight to stop illegal immigration,” the ad declared. In her own voice, Feinstein boasted of seeking more border guards, lighting and fencing.
In fact, says Walters, the border-hardening steps that then-President Bill Clinton took in the mid-1990s with Feinstein’s support foretold the wall that Trump seeks for the entire border. And they were effective, making crossing into California so difficult that the flow shifted eastward into Arizona.
What’s more, as Senator Lindsey Graham pointed out in a recent interview with Fox News’ Martha McCallum, in February of this year 44 Democrats including Minority Leader Charles Schumer voted for a bill that had $25 billion for a wall. Graham went on to note, “In 2013 Schumer helped create a bill that I was part of that had $8 billion for a wall — $42 billion for securing the border in other ways.”
The Democrats’ ever-shifting positions on border security and opposition to funding for the Wall that President Trump promised to build during the campaign has nothing to do with disagreement on the effectiveness of walls at borders, rather it is a despicable exercise in political hypocrisy in which the only constant is opposition to whatever position President Trump has taken.
Please lend your voice to our “Don’t Waste The Lame Duck, Build The Wall” campaign. Click the link and send a letter to Republicans in Congress demanding that the GOP stand with President Trump and fund the wall on our southern border.
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Photo “Chuck Shumer” by NBC.
