WASHINGTON _ The White House has drastically scaled back demands for funds to construct a border wall, seeking $1.6 billion in the budget headed for Congress on Tuesday _ $2.5 billion less than announced just two months ago.
And there is still no plan to force Mexico to pay for the project as the president vowed throughout the campaign.
The Trump administration budget blueprint rolled out in mid-March called for $2.6 billion toward wall construction by the end of 2018. The stopgap budget that runs through Sept. 30 includes $1.5 billion for border security. But in cutting the deal with Democrats, President Donald Trump dropped a demand to use any of those funds for new barrier construction along the Southwest border.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said at the time that there was too little time left in 2017 to start building a new wall. He touted the $1.5 billion as sufficient to repair and upgrade existing fencing, and to work on roads and planning for a more extensive barrier.
He also promised that the other $2.6 billion toward wall construction would be included in the 2018 budget plan, for a total of $4.1 billion.
But Trump's 2018 plan includes just $1.6 billion toward the wall. The White House will formally submit the plan on Tuesday.
Even so, John Czwartacki, communications director for the Office of Management and Budget, insisted that the White House is seeking exactly as much for wall construction in 2018 as it planned to seek two months ago.
"Donald Trump did not get all of the money that he wanted for the wall if you add up the 2017 and 2018 requests. That's a fair statement," he said, noting that Congress refused to grant the full request for the current year. "$4.1 billion is not available to us. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don't win as much."
Presidents' budgets amount to suggestions, and lawmakers routinely shrug off such input from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The scaling back of wall funding could reflect a recognition that a "sea to shining sea" border wall that probably would cost $25 billion or more is unnecessary and impractical. The Rio Grande defines about a third of the 2,000-mile border. Apart from the river, rough terrain elsewhere would make a fence or wall impossible to build and maintain. There already is fencing of various types along 650 miles of the border, mostly in California and around urban areas such as Laredo and El Paso.
The Homeland Security Department's specifications for the wall call for a barrier 18 to 30 feet high, impervious to tunneling to 6 feet below the surface, and to assaults by torch or pickax for a least a half-hour.
Late Monday, Czwartacki argued that the $2.6 billion cited in the mid-March budget blueprint was never intended to be spent only on physical barriers. That means the $1.6 billion in the 2018 budget is a new detail, rather than a smaller target, he said.
"The president is serious about the wall and he's going to build a wall," he said, adding, "There's been no shift."
But Mulvaney and other administration officials repeatedly cited $4.1 billion as the target for spending on a border wall through the end of 2018.
The 2017 supplemental budget request, he told reporters on March 15, "includes $1.5 billion for the wall this year ... . The $1.5 billion allows us to start that program. We come along with additional funding _ $2.6 (billion) _ in 2018."
The president's "budget blueprint" released at the time touts that it:
Secures the borders of the United States by investing $2.6 billion in high-priority tactical infrastructure and border security technology, including funding to plan, design and construct a physical wall along the Southern border as directed by the president's January 25, 2017, executive order. This investment would strengthen border security, helping stem the flow of people and drugs illegally crossing the U.S. borders.
At a press briefing May 1, Mulvaney was asked how much the White House would seek for the 2018 budget. "I want to say it's $4.5 billion," he said, with a caveat that reporters should check that with his aides.
