Jason Chaffetz: If Democrats won't spend $5 billion on a wall they should spend $25 billion on border security

Jason Chaffetz Fox News

If congressional Democrats won’t provide the $5 billion President Trump has asked for to fund a wall or other physical barrier along the U.S. border with Mexico and end the partial government shutdown, then Republicans should offer an alternative proposal: $25 billion – five times as much – for border security.
To properly protect the integrity of our borders without a wall, the government will need at least an additional $25 billion. That should be the message to the Democrats.
Here’s how the $25 billion should be spent:
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JASON CHAFFETZ: TRUMP'S BORDER WALL MAY GET FUNDING AFTER ALL (THANKS TO THIS DIRTY LITTLE WASHINGTON SECRET)
Repairs to existing barriers
Congress should agree with the Customs and Border Patrol that certain sections of the nearly 2,000 miles of border with Mexico need a physical impediment to curb the flow of human trafficking, drugs, weapons and other illegal activity.
Use $5 billion to simply fix and improve current border walls and fencing. Democrats should be able to live with this because it would enables them to keep their commitment to oppose a new wall.
More officers at higher pay
Days after he took office, President Trump signed an executive order to hire 5,000 additional Customs and Border Patrol officers, and 10,000 additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
Two years later there are fewer people at the Customs and Border Patrol and only a negligible increase in ICE officers. There are currently roughly 4,800 ICE officers and 60,000 Transportation Security Administration personnel.
Let’s give Customs and Border Patrol and ICE officers a 20 percent pay increase to attract the highest quality employees and to diminish longstanding retention issues. Money will also be needed to dramatically staff up as promised. Democrats should have no difficulty justifying support for federal workers to their base.

Let’s give Customs and Border Patrol and ICE officers a 20 percent pay increase to attract the highest quality employees and to diminish longstanding retention issues. Money will also be needed to dramatically staff up as promised. Democrats should have no difficulty justifying support for federal workers to their base.

Tracking entry and exit
For decades, the law has required an entry and exit system to track movement across the border. But that system is still not operational. It remains in development.
President Trump has done more to move this effort forward than any other president, but let’s take this opportunity to get it across the finish line.
Properly funding the entry and exit tracking system will provide the tools to address the fundamental problem of visa overstays. If you don’t know who is coming in and leaving the country, you can’t consistently enforce the law.
Further, we should track the millions of people who use a border crossing card to enter the U.S. The card is intended to be used for short trips – a maximum of 72 hours.
We have no reliable method to track the abuse of this system. Border crossing cards are valuable to criminals, drug mules, or human traffickers who might use them to travel undetected to our country’s interior. The cards are a convenience for those who live near the border, but we must have the ability to track when those cards are being abused.
Holding illegal immigrants
With large numbers of people crossing our border illegally, we must allocate more money to detain, house, transport and deport illegal immigrants. This is especially true with criminals and those who have previously been deported but illegally returned to the United States.
The Homeland Security Department needs to be able to increase the contracting with county facilities and live with their standards of incarceration. The county facilities should be compensated to hold people while the feds process them for potential deportation.
Cargo inspections
Current law requires 100 percent of all inbound cargo to the U.S. to be inspected. However, we inspect less than 2 percent.
Previously, I worked with incoming House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., on this topic. Improving inspections requires more funding. The Chinese are the worst offenders.
Our customs officials have great working relationships with South Korean and Pakistan, for instance, where we can inspect cargo as it goes into the containers.
Not true with China. The Chinese are the most secretive and difficult, from my experience. Let’s do as the law requires and inspect 100 percent of the cargo. Democrats such as Nadler have supported this previously and should do so now.
Sanctuary cities
In just the last few weeks we have seen the devastation of the sanctuary policies play out in the San Joaquin Valley of California as the criminal element of the illegal immigrant population was able to evade ICE officers.
It’s time to force the issue and allow local law enforcement officers to appropriately cooperate with their federal law enforcement partners. This may be a tough pill to swallow for Democrats, but remember, in return there will be no new wall, which is just as tough for Republicans.

In just the last few weeks we have seen the devastation of the sanctuary policies play out in the San Joaquin Valley of California as the criminal element of the illegal immigrant population was able to evade ICE officers.  It’s time to force the issue and allow local law enforcement officers to appropriately cooperate with their federal law enforcement partners.

DACA
DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Action should take place now to help the illegal immigrants brought here by their parents as children who are protected by this program.
Citizenship should not be automatic, but this population should receive legal documentation to be in the U.S. and an ability to get in line, like those who came here legally, for citizenship if they choose.
Should a DACA designee be convicted of a serious crime, then that person should be subject to deportation just like any other non-citizen immigrant.
Tunnel Task Force
When many members of our military were being killed by Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon stood up the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). We spent more than $20 billion.
Let’s do the same to detect and destroy the tunnels used by drug cartels and human traffickers to enter our country. We can call it Tunnel Recognition Underground Military Program (TRUMP).
The Democrats say they support “border security,” but they can’t back up the claim. Many of them have advocated for abolishing ICE, supporting sanctuary cities, and opposing an “immoral” wall on our southern border.
Perhaps the steps outlined here strike the right balance for both parties to solve the impasse and improve the integrity of our borders.
But then again, it is Washington, where delay, blame, and inaction usually prevail. #SAD.

Former NY Times editor rips Trump coverage as biased

Jill Abramson

A former executive editor of the New York Times says the paper’s news pages, the home of its straight-news coverage, have become “unmistakably anti-Trump.”
Jill Abramson, the veteran journalist who led the newspaper from 2011 to 2014, says the Times has a financial incentive to bash the president and that the imbalance is helping to erode its credibility.
In a soon-to-be published book, “Merchants of Truth,” that casts a skeptical eye on the news business, Abramson defends the Times in some ways but offers some harsh words for her successor, Dean Baquet. And Abramson, who was the paper’s only female executive editor until her firing, invoked Steve Bannon’s slam that in the Trump era the mainstream media have become the “opposition party.”
“Though Baquet said publicly he didn’t want the Times to be the opposition party, his news pages were unmistakably anti-Trump,” Abramson writes, adding that she believes the same is true of the Washington Post. “Some headlines contained raw opinion, as did some of the stories that were labeled as news analysis.”
What’s more, she says, citing legendary 20th century publisher Adolph Ochs, “the more anti-Trump the Times was perceived to be, the more it was mistrusted for being biased. Ochs’s vow to cover the news without fear or favor sounded like an impossible promise in such a polarized environment.”
Abramson describes a generational split at the Times, with younger staffers, many of them in digital jobs, favoring an unrestrained assault on the presidency. “The more ‘woke’ staff thought that urgent times called for urgent measures; the dangers of Trump’s presidency obviated the old standards,” she writes.
Trump claims he is keeping the “failing” Times in business—an obvious exaggeration—but the former editor acknowledges a “Trump bump” that saw digital subscriptions during his first six months in office jump by 600,000, to more than 2 million.

Former executive editor of the New York Times Jill Abramson.

Dean Baquet 2019 New York Times Editor

“Given its mostly liberal audience, there was an implicit financial reward for the Times in running lots of Trump stories, almost all of them negative: they drove big traffic numbers and, despite the blip of cancellations after the election, inflated subscription orders to levels no one anticipated.”
The Times has long faced accusations of liberal bias, even before Trump got into politics and became its harshest critic. But Abramson’s words carry special weight because she is also a former Times Washington bureau chief and Wall Street Journal correspondent specializing in investigative reporting.
Baquet has said that Trump’s attacks on the press are “out of control” and that it is important to use the word “lie” when the president tells a clear untruth.
In “Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts,” Abramson praised as “brave and right” Baquet’s decision to run this headline when Trump abandoned his birtherism attacks on Barack Obama: “Trump Gives Up a Lie But Refuses to Repent.”
Abramson, who had her share of clashes with Baquet when he was her managing editor, sheds light on a 2016 episode when Baquet held off on publishing a story that would have linked the Trump campaign with Russian attempts to influence the election.
Liz Spayd, then the Times public editor, wrote that the paper, which concluded that more evidence was needed, appeared “too timid” in not running the piece, produced by a team that included reporter Eric Lichtblau.
Baquet “seethed” at this scolding, Abramson says, and emailed Lichtblau: “I hope your colleagues rip you a new a*****e.”
Baquet wrote that “the most disturbing thing” about Spayd’s column “was that there was information in it that came from very confidential, really difficult conversations we had about whether or not to publish the back channel information. I guess I’m disappointed that this ended up in print.
“It is hard for a journalist to complain when confidential information goes public. That’s what we do for a living, after all. But I’ll admit that you may find me less than open, less willing to invite debate, the next time we have a hard decision to make.”
Lichtblau soon left the Times for CNN, where he was one of three journalists fired when the network retracted and apologized for a story making uncorroborated accusations against Trump confidante Anthony Scaramucci. And the Times soon abolished the public editor’s column.
Abramson is critical of Trump as well. She calls his “fake news” attacks a “cheap way of trying to undermine the credibility of the Times’s reporting as something to be accepted as truth only by liberals in urban, cosmopolitan areas.”
The Times, which broke the story of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, also “made some bad judgment calls and blew its Clinton coverage out of proportion,” Abramson writes. She says Clinton “was wary of me,” mishandled the scandal and “was secretive to the point of being paranoid.”
Abramson is candid in acknowledging her faults. When then-publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was considering promoting her to the top job, he told her over lunch at Le Bernadin: “Everyone knows there’s a good Jill and a bad Jill. The big question for me is which one we’ll see if you become executive editor.”
She admitted to him that “I could be self-righteous when I felt unheard, I interrupted, I didn’t listen enough.”
It was a heated battle with Baquet that led to her ouster in 2014. He was furious upon learning that she was trying to trying to recruit another top journalist—Abramson says an executive ordered her to keep it secret—who would share the managing editor’s title.
Sulzberger called her in, fired her, and handed her a press release announcing her resignation.
Abramson says she replied: “Arthur, I’ve devoted my entire career to telling the truth, and I won’t agree to this press release. I’m going to say I’ve been fired.”
Her final judgment: “I was a less than stellar manager, but I also had been judged by an unfair double standard applied to many women leaders.”

Best Dumb Democrat Cartoons

And You Did Vote Them Back In Dumb Asses.

Lawmaker who suggested Trump use ‘own funds’ to help pay for border wall has history of missing votes: report

Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., ranks 48th out of 435 congress members for missed votes.  (ivn.us)

A congressman who last week suggested that President Trump ought to fork over his "own funds" to help fund the border wall, reportedly has a history of missing votes on Capitol Hill.
U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican who represents North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District, missed a total of 7.7 percent of House votes in 2017 – ranking him 48th among 435 members in missed votes, according to statistics cited by the News & Observer of Raleigh.
More recently, an illness has prevented Jones from voting since late September. He has missed at least 27 roll call votes since then, through the House's reconvening in November, the report said. He is expected to Capitol Hill when Congress reconvenes in January, the News & Observer reported.
Jones, 75, won an easy victory in the November midterms. During the primary, he said it would be his final term in office if he was elected.
The lawmaker's statement that Trump should contribute his own money was said amid a partial government shutdown, stemming in part from Congress' inability to reach a deal on Trump's request for $5 billion for a border wall.
Jones also suggested slashing federal aid or funding the war in Afghanistan as ways to come up with the extra money.
Since the federal government partially shut down Dec. 22, Republicans and Democrats have been at a seeming impasse over Trump’s demands for $5 billion for a border wall. Trump continued to press Democrats to "give us the votes necessary for border security" in a series of tweets on New Year's Eve.
House Democrats said they plan to introduce a legislative package later Monday to re-open the government, including a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security at current levels through Feb. 8 with $1.3 billion for border security, but it's unclear what kind of support it will get from Republicans. It did not include money for the wall.

Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential run ‘will be the end of her’: A.B. Stoddard

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has her eyes set on the 2020 presidential race, but the controversy surrounding her claims of Native American ancestry may have cost her political future, RealClearPolitics associate editor A.B. Stoddard argued Monday night on the "Special Report" All-Star panel.
On Monday morning, Warren announced she was forming an exploratory committee in preparation of what will likely be a presidential run in 2020. The Massachusetts Democrat is the third member of her party to declare such ambitions -- following former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and U.S. Rep. John Delaney of Maryland.
In October, Warren released the findings of a DNA test that show that she may be 1/1,024th Native American, in a bid to quiet her critics. She had been accused of claiming she had Native American heritage to advance her career, something President Trump has repeatedly suggested.
Stoddard, who appeared with the Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway and Washington Examiner editorial director Hugo Gurdon, expressed that Warren’s deflection from the ancestry controversy isn’t good enough since it was “truly a debacle.”
“It showed what her political judgment is really like. And it’s one thing to just be on the Senate floor or the campaign trail in 2016, have a national network of support, have a good message. It’s another to make a huge blunder, sort of taking Trump’s bait ... but yeah, she has a bad story on this issue,” Stoddard told the panel. “She brings the video out in late October, two weeks before the midterms, steps on the Democrats’ message. It’s completely selfish and sort of self-absorbed and tone-deaf, and then she gets dissed by the Cherokee Nation. It was a disaster and Democrats were furious. And they believe that it was a fatal blow.”

“She brings the video out in late October, two weeks before the midterms, steps on the Democrats’ message. ... It was a disaster and Democrats were furious. And they believe that it was a fatal blow.”
— A.B. Stoddard, RealClearPolitics associate editor

“Instead of sort of just stepping aside and using what she has, which is some national support and kind of being a kingmaker, she’s gonna step into this race and it’s gonna be the end of her,” Stoddard continued. “It’s a wide-open race and I expect that this primary run to really go into late spring of 2020, so a year-and-a-half of a Democratic Party freak-out. They are very divided, but Elizabeth Warren, even after 2016 I’m going to deposit is not going to be the nominee. Look at the polling, no one is excited about her.”
Hemingway agreed with Stoddard, calling Warren’s rollout of her DNA results was “horrifically done.” She also drew attention to Warren’s “vibe,” which she described as a “hectoring middle school principal” and suggested that her policies would be “more challenging” for the senator since a general election candidate tends to be more moderate.
Meanwhile, Gurdon asserted that President Trump wasn’t going to “get his wish” in running against Warren in 2020 since many already see her as “yesterday’s woman.”
“The fact is that the party has already moved to adopt most of her positions. She doesn’t stand out and there are younger guns in the field,” Gurdon said. “Her announcement today was pretty drab, it was very formulaic. She, you know, emphasized her roots in Oklahoma and her links to the military and the middle class. And it was just ho-hum kind of -- I just think that she’s already yesterday’s woman. There will be somebody else who gets the nomination.”

Dems aim to bring big-government programs to floor vote with 2019 House takeover

Expect to hear the words “free,” “guaranteed” and “for all” a whole lot more in the new year as Democrats prepare an arsenal of big-government bills that could actually see a floor vote once they take control of the House.
Come January, proposals like “Medicare for all” and a host of other generous-but-costly welfare programs that were little more than talking points in recent years could have a shot at passing a chamber of Congress.
“There are dozens of measures like this that have been languishing with Republicans at the helm for years, and I expect to see many of them finally come to the floor under Democratic leadership,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., told Fox News.
With the GOP’s expanded majority in the Senate, it’s unlikely these measures would make it to President Trump’s desk. But their consideration on the House side would mark a first step in formally considering major government expansions – concerning everything from education to health care – that Democrats increasingly favor. And with “Medicare for all” and similar proposals amounting to litmus tests for modern progressives, roll-call votes on any of these issues would reveal just how broad their support is.
At the same time, floor votes putting Democrats on record for multi-trillion-dollar policies could embolden Republicans working to recover from their midterm losses.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, shortly before the November elections, told Breitbart News Daily that Democrats are moving “toward clear socialism,” and suggested Republicans need to make the case for “unleashing the great powers of liberty and freedom.”
Some of the Democratic Party’s agenda, likely to be spearheaded by Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, was spelled out in their “A Better Deal” campaign platform. The set of proposals claims nearly every item could be paid for by rolling back the Trump tax cuts. The most liberal bills have emerged from the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
This, however, does not include “Medicare for all,” which according to one estimate could cost nearly $33 trillion over 10 years.
And “Medicare for all” is just one component of the much broader “Green New Deal” platform being pushed by progressives like Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – which also calls for a tuition-free and federally funded education system, guaranteed jobs with an emphasis on “green” jobs, and more.
The Daily Caller reported that more than 40 Democratic lawmakers back the plan – though it’s unclear whether the plan would ever be translated into a bill, let alone come to a vote.
Still, Democratic members, while in the minority, sponsored individual bills calling for “college for all,” “debt-free college,” “child care for all,” and a “jobs guarantee” during the last two years, which could now be voted on along with climate legislation, pro-labor union bills and attempts to roll back the tax reform bill that passed in late 2017.
“The American people picked Democrats in November because they were tired of watching Republicans ignore working families and pass laws lining the pockets of big corporations, millionaires and billionaires,” Watson Coleman said.
Watson Coleman introduced the Federal Jobs Guarantee Development Act in 2018, and said she expects the bill to reach a vote in 2019. Under the bill, the Labor Department would establish job-guarantee test sites in 15 high-unemployment areas across the country. The federal government would match those seeking employment with jobs in understaffed fields.
Watson Coleman argued that the measure would build “economic security for working families and grows our country’s middle class while placing workers in industries with real need.”
There is one area of “A Better Deal” that could see bipartisan cooperation and support from President Trump -- a $1 trillion infrastructure package.
“A Better Deal” also calls for spending $50 billion to increase public school teacher pay, and another $50 billion for school infrastructure.
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., likely the incoming chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee, also introduced a “Worker’s Freedom to Negotiate Act” that bans state laws that allow employees to opt not to join a union and pay union dues. Currently, 28 states have some form of a “right-to-work” law.
The Democratic campaign plan also calls for spending $40 billion on “universal high speed Internet.” A similar bill was promoted by Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., who pushed to expand Internet into rural areas.
Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., has been a leading advocate of the Child Care for Working Families Act, a concept promoted in the party’s campaign plan. The legislation would ensure that no family under 150 percent of a state’s median income pays more than 7 percent of their income for child care. The legislation also would establish a federal-state partnership to provide child care from birth through age 13.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he anticipates his Job Opportunities for All Act—with 22 Democratic co-sponsors—will make it to the floor in the new Congress.
The legislation, which Khanna, elected the first vice chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has said fulfills part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s proposed “economic bill of rights,” would provide federal funding to put people to work immediately in both the public and the private sector.
“The Job Opportunities for All Act, H.R. 6485, will help create good paying private sector and public sector job opportunities for people in places left behind,” Khanna told Fox News. “I expect my bill, along with innovative thinking from my colleagues, to be considered as Democrats work to build a jobs agenda.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal D-Wash., could play a prominent role in such legislative proposals. She is a co-chairwoman of the Medicare For All Caucus, which has nearly 80 members committed to a complete government-run health care system. She was also elected co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus set to have more than 90 members after the election.
Jayapal was also the sponsor of the College for All Act in 2017, which would eliminate tuition and fees at public colleges and universities for families earning up to $125,000, and make community college free for everyone. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced the Senate version. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., the other progressive caucus co-chairman, introduced a similar bill, the Debt-Free College Act, which would provide more federal funding to states to alleviate student loan debt.

NBC's New Year's Eve show with Carson Daly, Chrissy Teigen, Leslie Jones has viewers crying 'complete disaster' and 'trainwreck'

Billboards welcome in the new year in New York's Times Square, Monday, Dec. 31, 2018. (Associated Press)

NBC's New Year's Eve show left many viewers appalled by a co-host and baffled by its last-second omission of the countdown clock.
During and after the broadcast, negative comments poured in on social media, with some calling the program a "complete disaster" and "trainwreck" for an evening of blunders.
"NBC this is the worst New Years Show ever!!!" wrote one user.
"NBC Is AWFUL!!!! What a horrible New Years program. They literally ruin everything they broadcast!" wrote another.
The show's lineup featured co-hosts Carson Daly, Chrissy Teigen, Leslie Jones, and Keith Urban. Criticism was particularly directed at Teigen, who devoted a segment to discussing "vaginal steaming."
"I'm embarrassed for America watching @chrissyteigen talk about vaginal steaming. Way to help me ring in the new year with family. Turning it to Fox now," wrote one user.
The program was also mocked for cutting away just minutes before midnight "to show local celebration at a hotel with maybe 12 in attendance," wrote a Twitter user.
And in yet another forgettable moment, Teigen's face was crushed by an umbrella after a failed attempt to hug guest Leslie Jones after the clock struck midnight.

Pelosi During Gov Shutdown Cartoons

OPM to furloughed workers: “barter” advice was a mistake due to error

OAN Newsroom
8:35 PM PT — Sunday, Dec. 30, 2018

The Office of Personnel Management apologizes after giving bizarre advice to furloughed workers.
The OPM told the Washington Post on Sunday in “inadvertently” sent a tweet last week suggesting workers “barter” with creditors during the government shutdown.
It claims it was a “Legacy Document from 2013 that was intended to provide a set of templates for workers.”
The federal government has been in a partial shutdown since Saturday, December 22nd.
The OPM says while most federal employees have yet to miss a paycheck, they recognize the fact furloughed employees are concerned about the financial implications of a shutdown.

Bernie Sanders staffers seek to address ‘predatory culture’ during 2016 campaign: report

FILE 2018, photo, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks about his new book, 'Where We Go From Here: Two Years in the Resistance' in Washington. (AP)

More than two dozen people who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign have called for a meeting with the senator and his top aides — saying there’s been talk in recent weeks about a “predatory culture” that developed while he was running.
The former staff members sent Sanders and his principal campaign committee a letter, which was published online Sunday by POLITICO, citing an “untenable and dangerous dynamic” that they hope to “pre-empt” in the “upcoming presidential cycle.”
The men and women requested a meeting in person “to discuss the issue of sexual violence and harassment” — but didn’t describe any specific incidents or accusations.
“In recent weeks there has been an ongoing conversation on social media, in texts, and in person, about the untenable and dangerous dynamic that developed during our campaign,” their letter says. “We the undersigned request a meeting with Senator Sanders and his leadership team … for the purpose of planning to mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle — both in the primary and potential general election campaigns for 2019 and 2020.”
Specifically, the staffers said they hope to establish “a follow-up plan for implementing concrete sexual harassment policies and procedures.”
“It is critically important that Senator Sanders attend this meeting to understand the full scope of the issue from 2016 and how the campaign plans to move forward,” their letter continues.
Some of the signers told POLITICO that they hope the proposed meeting wouldn’t bolster the longstanding “Bernie Bro” argument, but instead serve as a leading example of what campaigns should do in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
“This letter is just a start,” explained one organizer. “We are addressing what happened on the Bernie campaign but as people that work in this space we see that all campaigns are extremely dangerous to women and marginalized people and we are attempting to fix that.”
The signers who spoke to POLITICO insisted that their call for action wasn’t just about Sanders, but the senator’s campaign committee welcomed it anyway.
“We thank the signers of the letter for their willingness to engage in this incredibly important discussion,” they said in response. “We always welcome hearing the experiences and views of our former staff. We also value their right to come to us in a private way so their confidences and privacy are respected. And we will honor this principle with respect to this private letter.”