Border Security, Government Shutdowns, and Political Chicken
I know that $5 billion is real money to most Americans.
From a budget perspective, however (the context in which this discussion is taking place), $5 billion is a rounding error. The
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) budget projection for FY 2018 as of May 2018 showed federal government outlays of $4.1 trillion. That means that if the president's wall request is 0.12 percent of last year's federal budget. Even
CNN Politics (which indicates that the total federal budget is the higher $4.4 trillion) states: "And that $5 billion might sound like a lot, but the US government brings in and spends trillions of dollars each year."
So why would the Democrats want to stop a budget of more than $4 trillion from being enacted over 1/820th of that budget?
Politics.
Want proof? There were
80 Senators who voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. As the
Congressional Research Service (CRS)described that bill, in part it:
Among the Senators who voted for that bill were Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, Tom Carper of Delaware, Hillary Clinton of New York, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and Ron Wyden of Oregon, as well as Joe Biden of Delaware and
Barack Obama of Illinois. And
Chuck Schumer of New York. You do not need to follow politics closely to know that these are not what we would call "immigration hawks".
Schumer, Carper, Feinstein, Stabenow, and Wyden still sit in the Senate. Clinton left to become secretary of state, and then ran an unsuccessful campaign for president. Obama and Biden left to become president and vice president, respectively. And Carper is a Deputy Democratic Whip and Schumer is the Minority Leader of the upper chamber.
A cynic would assert that those senators cast those votes because it was brought to the floor 40 days before the 2006 midterm elections, and did not want their party (which was cruising to a victory in those elections, in which it captured both chambers from the Republicans) to appear soft on border security. Democrats in more tenuous seats (for example, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, both of whom would later lose reelection), also voted in favor of the bill, but again, that does not prove that they did not support the bill or its intent