On Saturday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) gave a statement on the Senate floor in which he announced, “For the sake of compromise, for the sake of coming together, I offered it.” The “it” in this sentence being President Trump’s border wall along the Mexican border. Early Saturday, Schumer stated that “During the meeting, in exchange for strong DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) protections, I reluctantly put the border wall on the table for the discussion.” Democrats all around have sharply criticized President Trump’s policies on illegal immigration and now that it comes to the nitty-gritty, you back down after having your chest puffed out so far in the attempt to act like a strong leader of the party. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats, the party of which he is technically the leader of within the Senate, oppose the border wall, yet he offers to fund it in an attempt to maintain the status quo. Schumer is calling it “compromise,” I am calling it a weakness in the face of opposition.
As a vast majority of you know, a wall along the American border with Mexico was a major talking point of President Trump’s populist, nationalist, “America First” message, a message that sixty-one percent of the American people are averse to, as shown in a recent CNBC poll. Democrats have largely opposed Trump’s requests for billions of dollars to construct the wall. Any implication they are willing to yield is likely to anger their progressive base, the same base they have continued to alienate since the 2016 election.
Under no circumstance do I feel that horrendous border wall should have been a bargaining chip, because if you give an inch and he will take a mile, a mile the American people, and more importantly the Democratic party, cannot afford. Now, Schumer and other Democrats may argue that the wall was only put on the table to avoid a government shutdown and to protect recipients of DACA. Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez even went as far as to say “This is no longer about a wall.” However, I must disagree, while both arguments are respectable motives, both could have been accomplished without giving into President Trump’s outlandish demands, which only serve to inflate his own ego.
We are one-fourth of the way through President Trump’s first, and hopefully last, term. This is under no circumstance the right time to show weakness to someone who has no respect for those who he was elected to represent. By showing brittleness, we are not only presenting the Republican party with a means to kick us while we are down, we are abandoning the very people we are meant to assist and protect. Yes, compromises must be made in governance, but this is by no means one of those situations in which it should even be an option. So no, Chuck Schumer, giving Trump his wall is not a “compromise,” it is a weakness that we cannot afford to show.
You can watch Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s statement from the Senate floor here.
