Front Burner - Why the US Government is Still Shut Down

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

The United States government is entering the thirteenth day of a government shutdown that some predict will last for weeks. So how does this end? CBC correspondent Paul Hunter warns we are in uncharted territory. "There's no path out, and that's the problem right now."

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. I'm Jamie Poisson.

Thank you very much. It's a great honor to have Nancy Pelosi with us and Chuck Schumer with us. About three weeks ago, there was this moment in the Oval Office. Donald Trump is there. So are two high-ranking Democrats. They're talking about government funding and the border wall. That'll be the one that will be the easiest of all. What do you think, Chuck? Maybe not? It's called funding the government, Mr. President.

Trump, he wants money to build this wall. Democrats, for their part, they say forget it. And predictably, this meeting, it all kind of falls apart. If we don't get what we want, one way or the other, whether it's through you, through a military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government. Okay, fair enough. And I am proud.

And I'll tell you what. And shut it down he did. At least partially. So today, 13 days into the shutdown, I'm talking to our correspondent in D.C., Paul Hunter. He's traveled to border states that could be walled in, and it's fascinating to hear what he's seen and heard. And he also has some thoughts about why this is all happening now. That's coming up on FrontBurner. Hi, Paul. Hey, how's it going? Good. Thanks so much for joining us today. Pleasure.

Donald Trump, he has this cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon, and he says the government would stay partially shut down for as long as it takes until he gets this money to fund his border wall. Can you give me a sense of what the big effect is here of the shutdown? What's happening in Washington? Washington's very quiet. It's actually quite nice. I mean, it's kind of an invisible problem in a sense because it largely affects the bureaucracy. People just aren't going to work.

The museums are closed and the garbage cans are kind of overflowing a little bit. But otherwise, it's just a little bit quieter. But life goes on. And what about the people who are out of work? They will be without pay. They will get it in the end. They'll get back pay. But for those who kind of live paycheck to paycheck,

who have rent or mortgages to pay, it's going to be a problem. At what point does the government shutdown become completely unsustainable? Hard to say. It can't go on forever. Yeah, no, it can't. And the truth is nobody thinks it will. I mean, who knows? All bets are probably off with this administration.

But it starts to get complicated when stuff just isn't happening in the bureaucracy, the paperwork that needs to be done to keep things flowing. I mean, Congress will sit. I mean, legislators still come to work. It's just those in the background that aren't working. The House stands adjourned until 11 a.m. on Thursday, January 3rd, 2019. adjourned until 11 a.m. on Thursday, January 3rd, 2019. So, you know, we're talking today about the reason that the government is shut down, which is because of this wall that Donald Trump wants to build along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. And yet there's also a lot of confusion

about this wall and what it looks like and what kind of wall currently exists there. And so I know you've been to the U.S.-Mexico border a few times, and I'm hoping today that you can tell me a bit about that. For instance, there's existing fencing and walls there now. What do they look like? The answer is it depends where you go. And we've been from the west coast to the east coast all along the border covering this story. So Tijuana, the place where the

caravan ended up, you've actually got two walls, but an old wall kind of like made of sheet metal. You know, bits of it went up in the 90s, bits of it went up in the 2000s. The sheet metal, interestingly, for wall enthusiasts, is made of leftover landing pads from the Vietnam War. Oh, interesting. I know. And by the way, you can also see bits in it where they've been cut through and then patched up like Band-Aid with other bits of steel sheeting where people have cut through it.

And so this went up because, you know, back in the day, that whole border between San Diego and Tijuana went up because, you know, back in the day, that whole border between San Diego and Tijuana was kind of, you know, drug runners were coming up, but also day laborers that just wanted to go to San Diego and work and stuff. So in the 90s, they put 20 or 30 kilometers worth of this from the water's edge inland to kind of slow that down. And it was effective. slow that down. And it was effective. In the years since, including a big push in the 2000s, you see a lot more of the what is now about a thousand kilometers worth of, you know, the tall stuff with the slats that you see a lot of the images of. And that's a much more effective way to stop people from crossing. And I mean, it looks like in any international border, really. So a good

chunk of the border from the Pacific right to El Paso, Texas. So covering most of California, most of Arizona and New Mexico have that kind of slat fence up. And then there's not much in Texas. But it's kind of bizarre because we went to some places in the Texas border where the fence slash wall slash barrier, it just stops. You know, so you can walk around it. Right. Why? Partly because it's on private land. Partly because it's not on the literal border, which is the river, the Rio Grande, which runs through Texas.

So they put it on land. And so they're trying to give farmers in Texas access to their own lands because it's inland a little bit. It's really complicated. So it really, the answer to the question, what's the wall look like now, the existing wall? It sort of depends where you go. And what does Donald Trump want to do with this existing wall?

Does he want to replace parts of it? Or does he want to build where there is a wall that doesn't exist? Because we're talking today at least 1,000 kilometers of this 3,000 kilometer border has some sort of barrier. Even if it's a bad barrier, it has some sort of barrier on it. Indeed. And what Trump wants is sort of both. He wants more wall. And again, there's a bit of a semantic game going on here, whether you want to call it a fence or a wall or a barrier.

But he wants more of it. And he also wants to reinforce or strengthen parts of the existing wall. But by the way, so did Barack Obama, right? I think the American people, they appreciate and believe in immigration, but they can't have a situation where you just have half a million people pouring over the border without any kind of mechanism to control it. When you hear Trump these days talking about that he has built some wall, right? You hear it a lot. Yeah, he tweets about that all the time. He hasn't. The truth is that parts of the existing fence slash barrier slash wall have been reinforced or rebuilt. But that was approved by Barack Obama. So yes, new barrier is going

up on Trump's watch. But that was approved before Trump took the White House and it doesn't grow it. So you met a lot of people on the border and can you tell me about this one rancher, Bill Addington? Yeah, he's got a ranch in, I guess, West Texas, right down by the border. From the closest highway to the border, we got in his vehicle, and we drove easily an hour,

and then we hiked easily an hour after that, and Bill took us to the river. And there was Mexico across the way. We've hiked through all this for an hour and a half, and here we are. Where is here? Where are we? This is the Rio Grande, and that's Mexico. That's Mexico right there? Right there, 20 feet away.

And he told us, like, he does not want a wall that would cut through his beautiful property, that would do nothing, really, in terms of need, and to build a wall, it would have to go through his ranch. It really does break my heart that it's that Americans have come so far as to be so much in fear and some of them in hate against people that have been our neighbors here for a long time. Building a wall over this against the will of the people that live here,

such as me, will come over my dead body, to be honest. That's how adamantly he opposes the wall. And that's the problem in Texas broadly, which is mostly without a wall right now, is that it is mostly private property. And to do, I mean, you can do it. You know, they have something called evident domain down here akin to expropriation. But it would be a fight. Even if Trump gets the money, he would be in for a fight from property owners in Texas. What's your sense of how the border is working now where there is no barrier or fencing? No one will deny that people aren't getting through as it stands. Less than it was for sure, but people are crossing. When we were there, we saw it on that trip along the border. And we went to this one town where it's just a river and a

shallow river. And there's Mexico. You could almost throw a stone to it. And we were standing there and we saw, you know, like a border patrol kind of vehicle parked kind of just up a little hill on the Texas side, obviously. And I thought, well, we thought that's a pretty good shot for the documentary we were doing. And so being the polite Canadian, I went up to the guy to say, hey, we're just taking, you know, video. Don't mind us. And I said, what's going on here anyway? And the guy turns to me and he goes, he looks down at the reeds at River's Edge and he goes, you know, there's some bodies down there.

And I'm like, what? It's like, I thought it was dead bodies. But no, he meant migrants. And he said that they had just, they had watched them cross the river and they were down in the weeds down there. And I said, well, why don't you go get them? And he said, because it's complicated, but if they're going to cross the border, they're going to come up. So we'll just wait for them here. And eventually I guess they got impatient and the border guys went down and we, this is America, man. We just followed them. And they said, you know, come on. And they went down into the weeds and they got these guys. They're spread out.

And it's like they were coming across and they got caught. Hey, somebody said there was another one. Would you step back, please? I think that was the 11th and 12th that they'd caught that morning. Wow. When we were going down into the weeds following these guys, I'm not afraid to say that I was kind of freaked out. It's like, is this MS-13? Are they going to have guns?

Will they start shooting at us and stuff? But no, they were just a couple of scared guys who, I think it's fair to say, just wanted a better life. As countless migrants over the decades and centuries before had sought likewise. I mean, the people that we talked to said, look, nobody denies that there are bad people who cross. Most people will say the way they cross, incidentally, is in the backs of trucks at regular crossings or in tunnels under the border. Right. Like this is how a lot of drugs are being smuggled into the U.S.

That's the problem. And that ought to be fixed. Nobody wants bad guys coming up into America. Right. But most of these people, we were told, by people who live along the border, they just want a better life.

They don't have weapons. They don't come here trying to damage us. They have the American dream. They're not really bad people. They're just trying to make a living. I've heard this criticism

come from the Democrats that this wall won't actually keep the people that you want to keep out of the country out of the country. What are some other reasons why the Democrats are so opposed to this? There's a couple of reasons. Number one, it doesn't do the job, right? Because the bad guys will get in anyway. They do it all the time.

They're in trucks. They're in the tunnels. It's also a ton of money. I mean, depending on the report or study you want to give weight to. Because the numbers are all over the place. Indeed. $25 billion, $70 billion, $150 million just to build, $150 million a year to maintain. And what Democrats say is this is the 21st century. We've got other means.

We've got the technology to do it differently. And again, when you go along the border in Texas, as we did, and at places where there isn't a wall right now, and we did this, you look up in the sky and there floating up above is a giant kind of, I don't know what's in it, helium, but a big Zeppelin-esque drone, eyes in the sky, looking down. And so what wall opponents say is hire more border agents, put more drones in the sky, get more sensors out there that can do a better job in a more cost effective way than simply, you know, kowtowing to Trump's politics, which is to say, I'm going to fulfill my promise. I'm going to build a wall, you know, come hell or high water. Right. So the Democrats aren't arguing to just let migrants cross the border, even if they're not bad people, because I could certainly see the argument for wanting to control the number of people that are coming into your country.

They're just arguing that the wall isn't the way to do it. Exactly. The one thing Trump has done in his two years is not budge an inch on it. I mean, obviously, Mexico says they won't pay for this wall. And one of the reasons why the government is now shut down is because Donald Trump can't get domestic funding for this wall. One question I have is the Republicans have been in power. They've controlled both houses. Why did they not fund this wall?

Because it's a lot of money. Every single time Trump talked about the wall, it was indeed that Mexico is going to pay for it. So this ain't going to cost us a dime. When you go asking for the money from Congress, well, that's not what you promised in the campaign. And that's not what you've said throughout. And even if he, as he said, the USMCA trade deal will provide money for it. Most people who've analyzed the possibility of that say, even if you were to count some of the tariffs that you might have on cars coming up from Mexico, that's not going to get you anywhere near the money you would need for it.

Right. His argument that the new NAFTA that he negotiated is saving the U.S. so much money that the wall is paying for itself. And, you know, Republicans, you know, even though, you know, as many would say, they've been reticent to take a position that's too far from Donald Trump's positions in the last couple of years. No American politician wants to needlessly spend American U.S. tax dollars on stuff. So it's a complicated endeavor for anybody. But indeed, it's going to get all that much more complicated, given that Democrats now control the House. So why is this happening now, then? Democrats are going to take over the House today.

And so from where I'm sitting, he's stuck his heels in at a time when he's got the least political capital to spend on an idea that hasn't even necessarily been popular with his own party. That's the $70 billion question. I mean, what's the answer? Because Trump Nation. Because Ann Coulter. She is Trump Nation in a sense, right? She's Trump Nation personified. She's a right wing commentator for people who don't know who for a long time was pro Trump and who has lately taken to going after Trump for not building the wall, for not fulfilling his promise, for not doing what he said he would do. Either the whole thing was BS throughout the campaign and he was just lying to us to get himself elected, or he had no earthly idea how to get it done and no interest in finding out. There are many who believe that Trump sees those tweets and says, oh, my God, you know, this is humiliating.

Ann Coulter is pulling her support from me. What have I done? And so then he gets his backup and says, well, gosh darn it, I'm going to dig my heels in ever more. Right. I mean, Trump reads this stuff. Word was that he unfollowed Ann Coulter after that kind of stuff. But that matters to Donald Trump. So when you talk about his, you know, being adamant about the wall for the politics of it the and cultures of the world i think rush limbaugh also came out uh sort of went after him for not following up the wall yet trump gets nothing and the democrats get everything including control of the house

and they will say not one inch has been built you promised a wall it's not there why not it's a mugs game to analyze the psyche of Donald Trump. But I think that hurts him. I mean, I keep going back to this fight that he had in the Oval Office with Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi earlier in December, where he just completely dug his heels in on the wall and said that he would be proud, essentially, to shut down the government. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it. The last time you shut it down, it didn't work. I will take the mantle of shutting down. And I'm going to shut

it down for border security. But we believe you shouldn't shut it down. Thank you very much, everybody. Is that kind of behavior, do you think, in response to some of these criticisms that he's receiving from people who have been his supporters? Again, who am I to analyze the thinking of Donald Trump? There will be many books on this. There will be encyclopedias. Many books. There will be books. There will be encyclopedias. I think when Trump says and does things like he did in the Oval Office that day with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, that he is doing what he is so good at, which is talking to his base, which is's me saying right now, you know, to Chuck and Nancy, go to hell because I'm the tough guy that I always said I would be.

And so come 2020, stand by me again. And indeed, you know, we talk about the new Congress coming in now. We are effective today. So begins the 2020 presidential. Trump's going to be running again, and so he needs to make sure that his base know that he is still going to bat for them. But here's the question I have in terms of strategy. The Democrats do control the purse strings here, and Donald Trump has shut down the government, which isn't sustainable. So it feels like, and correct me if I'm wrong, he's backed himself into a corner here. Somebody

has to back down here. And it does seem like the Democrats have the upper hand. Yep. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Okay. That's correct. And nobody knows what the way out is on this because, again, Trump, the negotiator, hasn't really shown any evidence of negotiating on this. And he has quite forcibly put himself in this corner. I mean, we can all guess, but nobody knows how this is going to end because there's no path out. And that's the problem right now. So basically what you're telling me, Paul, is that 2019 is starting off a lot like 2018. Everything's the same.

Exactly. What a country. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that he wanted to make a deal. And then, before a closed-door meeting with leaders from both parties, he rejected two possible plans that could have ended the shutdown, one of which would have actually contributed some money to build the wall. Instead, he's insisting on getting more than $5 billion towards this wall. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back.

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