Will Trump Shut Down Government Over His Wall?

The funding for seven areas of government will expire on December 7th. Most of the federal budget for next year has been passed, but these seven ares remain. They are:

1. Agriculture
2. Commerce, Justice, Science
3. Financial Services & General Government
4. Homeland Security
5. Interior, Environment
6. State, Foreign Operations
7. HUD, Transportation

Donald Trump is threatening to refuse to sign a budget for these seven areas if that budget doesn't contain at least $5 billion to start his wall. Currently, Congress has only agreed to about $1.6 billion.

There's no doubt that the House (still controlled by Republicans) would give Trump the $5 billion. The fly in the ointment is the Senate. The Senate GOP would need 60 votes to pass a bill with wall funding -- and the Democrats could prevent them from getting to 60 (to kill a Democratic filibuster).

That means Trump will not get his $5 billion for the wall -- unless he gives the Democrats some things they want -- like a law protecting DACA Dreamers, taking the citizenship question off the census form, and protecting the Mueller investigation. Trump opposes all three of those things.

Another problem for Trump is shown in the chart above (from a Morning Consult Poll done between November 15th and 18th of 1,957 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error). About 55% of the public says the war is not worth shutting down the government (including 34% of Republicans, 61% of Independents, and 74% of Democrats). Trump is already very popular, and shutting the government down over his desire for a wall will not help him all.

Then there's a study by the Pew Research Center showing the wall is probably not needed anyway. These charts show that the number of undocumented immigrants in the country has dropped, and most of the ones still living here had been doing so for a long time (averaging nearly 15 years)

There is no massive invasion, as Trump would have you believe.