Tillis Is A Hypocrite
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For four years, President Trump has promised to build a “great” wall along our southern border and make Mexico pay for it. Mexico hasn’t paid one cent.
What has been accomplished? The U.S.-Mexico border is about 2,000 miles long. As of Sept. 1, 307 miles have been constructed. Most is not new. It replaces existing barriers. The cost to date has been almost $20 million per mile with the total cost approaching $25 billion. The latter figure has grown rapidly since the project was first proposed. Meanwhile, smugglers have demonstrated that they can cut through the wall with common power tools.
Unable to obtain Congressional support for his wall, Trump declared a national emergency and ordered the diversion of $8 billion previously appropriated for our military. Never before had a president declared such an emergency to circumvent Congress “to spend money it had expressly refused to authorize or allocate.” Items ranging from drug interdiction programs (Trump claims drugs from Mexico are a justification for a wall) to construction of schools for the children of military families lost funding as a result.
On Feb. 15, Sen. Tillis wrote a piece in the Washington Post. He declared support for the president’s vision of border security but stated that “his national emergency declaration on Feb. 15 was not the right answer.” He said, “I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress.” “I would vote in favor of the resolution disapproving the president’s national-emergency declaration . . .”
When that vote came before the Senate, 12 Republicans voted for it. One of them was not Senator Tillis. Rather than vote for measures that would actually improve our security, Tillis supported measures to rob resources from our military families. We need a Senator who is not a hypocrite slavishly tied to the foolish Trump wall and who will actually support our military families.
This is personal for Cal Cunningham. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a U.S. Army Reserve officer. He understands national security and deserves the support of every right thinking North Carolina voter.
Peter Chaveas
Brevard
