Report: Trump will ask Congress to pay for U.S.-Mexico border wall

(Image credit: Getty Images)

last updated 6 January 2017

Donald Trump's transition team has approached leading House Republicans to let them know the president-elect prefers to have Congress pay for the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, House GOP officials told CNN Thursday.

Throughout his campaign, Trump emphatically promised that he would force Mexico to pay for the border wall.

But now the transition team is telling Republicans in private meetings that Trump wants to fund it through the appropriations process, the officials said. The GOP could add billions of dollars to the spending bill that must be passed by April 28 in order to keep the government open, and the Democrats "may well find themselves in the position to shut down all of government to stop the build out of a wall, or of a barrier, or of a fence," Indiana Rep. Luke Messer (R) said Thursday. Messer added that while it's "big dollars," it's also a "question of priorities."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.