President Joe Biden said Thursday that he doesn’t believe border walls work, even as his administration said it will waive 26 laws to build additional border barriers in the Rio Grande Valley amid heightened political pressure over migration.

According to a notice posted to the Federal Register Wednesday, construction of the wall will be paid for using already appropriated funds earmarked specifically for physical border barriers. The administration was under a deadline to use them or lose them. But the move comes at a time when a new surge of migrants is straining federal and local resources and placing heavy political pressure on the Biden administration to address a sprawling crisis, and the notice cited “high illegal entry.”

Biden – who, as a candidate, vowed that there will “not be another foot” of border wall constructed on his watch – defended the decision to reporters Thursday, saying that he tried to get the money appropriated for other purposes but was unsuccessful.

“I’ll answer one question on the border wall: The border wall – the money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t.

And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office.

Asked whether he believes the border wall works, Biden answered, “No.”

    • underisk
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Obstruction implies there was any effort required here. Even just doing nothing would have been preferable to actively waiving environmental protections using the same powers they complained about Trump abusing.

    • Poggervania@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      19
      ·
      1 year ago

      Don’t forget, Dems and Pubs are basically on the same team: greedy fucks who benefit from having their hands in corporate money and corruption.

      So wouldn’t be surprised if this is one if those times where somehow, by a miracle the Dems and Pubs agree on something and decide it’s okay to build a huge fuck-off wall that probably won’t work long-term anyways.

        • Poggervania@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          Which has nothing to do with anything I said, but aight. In fact, the fact you had to defend your sexuality in a first-world country like the US is what’s so fucked up in the first place. The Netherlands were basically the first to make gay marriage legal in the 2000s, and a decent chunk of Europe also showed more support towards the LGTBQ community long before the US legalized gay marriage in all the states in 2015. Keep in mind that the places I mentioned tend to be actually left-leaning to a degree.

          My point is that the two US parties are more concerned with making sure the corporate owners get their way without too much hassle from the general populace - the far-right one just says the quiet parts out loud, while the center-right party gives you verbal support but most of the time doesn’t do shit because they like money, too. I mean, look at this actual topic here - building a border wall for Mexico has been a popular topic for Republicans… but suddenly the Democratic president can’t say no to this even though building this would bypass 26 different laws, which in other words, are 26 different reasons to not fucking do it if they didn’t want to like the president claims?

          Democrats want to keep the status quo and placate people with just enough bullshit (which, I’ll be honest, I 100% think they would be fine with not supporting LGTBQ communities if we, the people, would not fucking riot and oust them for stuff that should’ve been fine from the get-go decades ago), and the Republicans are now just trying to see how far they can push corpofascism before we, the people, decide to put a stop to that shit.

      • Instigate@aussie.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        There’s a difference between “these two are basically the same” and “one is bad while the other is worse”. Enlightened centrism does no one any good.

        • Poggervania@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          I say they’re basically the same because one party allows the other to apparently undermine the US Constitution to a pretty far degree. The Dems aren’t pushing back against the Pubs on their batshit insane abortion laws, child labor law regressions, and whatever the fuck DeSantis is doing in Florida - they’re just sort of going along with it. “Oh, it’s just them being far-right - that’s just the silly old Republicans!” The two US parties are, at best, far-right and center-right - so they ultimately have some of the same interests of keeping businesses and corporate lobbyists happy.

          Hell, it’s ultimately not a right-or-left thing - it’s a class thing. Both the Dems and the Pubs now are the rich “aristocracy” being bribed left and right by the fucking corporate owners, while they all fuck over the rest of us working class people for a quick buck. Remember when people were blasting Republicans for taking PPP loans for either their own personal business or literally just for profit? Turns out Dems were doing it too, but because Dems feed just the right amount of bullshit and the Republicans were (and still are) saying and doing some insane shit, we let it slide. So I say they are the same because they both do some shady shit for corporate lobbyists and want to personally benefit whenever they can - if the Dems truly cared about being more left, then they would have let Bernie be the presidential candidate instead of Hillary, and they would be more accepting of AOC instead of weirdly ostracizing her.