lay that out there very succinctly and clearly so there is no guessing about what the president is going to do. what you see happening now with republicans, it s almost like sort of the stockholm syndrome. they are caught. they don t know what to do. they re sort of caving on stuff that they would not have caved in on six months ago! and so the reality of it is, this big spending, you know, process that republicans seem to be buying into, i don t know how well it s going to sit with rank-and-file conservatives in the house who are budget hawks, who came to the congress with the mandate, you don t spend a dollar unless that dollar can be found someplace in the budget to spend. so good luck. steve, if i can, obviously in the last half hour, trying to figure out what this 20% import tax would be all about, because it s more complicated. it sounds like a silver bullet. it s really complicated. a lot of the products coming from mexico are like parts for american cars. what does that mean?
told us they would be red kwu, they had done their prep work, they had been through mock questioning before, and that certainly sounded like dr. carson had had some practice and did his homework. heather: mike emmanuel, great to see you. thank you. here with reaction to all of this, thome, the republican political analyst and executive vice president of jamestown. let s start with you and ben carson, not, maybe, a normal pick or natural pick to head up hud. one thing he s passionate about, trying to fix inner cities and urban america. do you think he can make changes that president obama didn t seem to address in his administration? i don t think the president didn t address it, i think he tried his hardest. the problem that ben carson is probably going to have the same problem donald trump is going to have, we need to invest in the infrastructure bill. they have to depend on the party to pass it. that s going to be the hard part, getting the budget hawks to pass a trillion dollar
seen. under president bush, they tried with the fencing issue. supposed to be 700 miles of fencing. that even didn t get finished. you know, congress has an issue. we have up to april 28th when the current spending bill runs out. there is a possibility of a government shutdown again in april. if this comes up and you have republican budget hawks saying they don t want to spend donald trump s $8 billion. some analysts say it is up to $25 billion for a wall. you will run into this with the republican party. i think you will see something worked out. it is clear the american people want to see border security and it is overdue. so many other issues besides that. interior enforcement down. different laws. you will see something finally come together with republicans. i m telling you right now, mexico will not pay for it. the american taxpayer is. or reimburse us. $8 billion to $10 billion. he will start fighting with the republican party. not just the democrats. the 20006 appropriation f
the country expect and what i very much hope we will give them. is donald trump going deliver for the republicans in congress or are the republicans in congress going to deliver for donald trump? i mean it s important to remember that donald trump won the presidency without having this giant platform of policy positions. he said explicitly in august of last year that he really didn t care about policy details. he didn t think voters cared about policy details. he focus on trade and a few other things, immigration, obviously. as a general rule i think the republicans in congress or republicans in the legislative branch justifiably feel they will have something of a car carte blanche to do what they want to do. budget hawks like paul ryan if those hawks are still flying if they care about deficits and other things. let s talk about the other side of the aisle, chuck shumer.
local commuter rail networks amtrak has a monopoly. the real issue there s a genuine concern in congress about whether or not taxpayers should be funding passenger rail at all, particularly in the northeast corridor. it s one portion of the country for the entire federal treasury goes and sub sidized it there s question among budget hawks and people who would like to see smaller government on why we need to fund it at all. amtrak has not been a particularly good steward of its own money. this is irksome to republicans like to see more passenger rail and investment and certainly that would help but an example would be that there was a lot of money put towards high speed rail in president obama s first term in the stimulus and it was all spent on money in california for a line that people did not think