Senator DeMint’s Demented Wall

It never fails to amaze me how congressional leaders who are not from border states believe they know more about border security than the residents and law enforcement who live there.

Take Senator Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina for example. DeMint, a relative newcomer to Congress who has become the conservative leading light in the Republican Party, introduced an amendment in July to build an additional 369 miles of border wall.

Apparently, DeMint didn’t get the GAO report released three weeks ago that says the wall is costing us bilions and Homeland Security can’t even tell whether it’s working or not. One thing it is good for is providing scrap metal to thieves, apparently. Oh, and it’s ugly, infringes on people’s private property rights, destroys the environment and guarantees private defense contractors like Boeing limitless  taxpayer dollars.

Luckily, according to this Rio Grande Guardian story today, Congressman Ciro Rodriguez, a Democract who represents the Texas border, was able to strip the amendment yesterday from the $42.8 billion Homeland Security bill.

The biggest disappointment in all of this is that our two Texas Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchinson — who should really know better — voted for DeMint’s border wall amendment. How many times have Cornyn and Hutchinson looked border residents in the eye and said they’d do everything in their power to stop the wall?

What a waste of time.