As the government gets set to shut down in about 12 hours, there’s apparently only one number that matters: $5 billion. That’s the only line on Donald Trump’s ransom note to Congress. If lawmakers agree to turn over the $5 billion for his border-wall project, he’ll keep the government open. If they don’t, he’ll shut the government down — “for a very long time.”
But it’s worth pausing to ask an awkward question: how exactly did we arrive at this specific figure?
In February 2017, Reuters published an interesting report on the project’s price tag.
President Donald Trump’s “wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border would be a series of fences and walls that would cost as much as $21.6 billion, and take more than three years to construct, based on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security internal report seen by Reuters on Thursday.
The report’s estimated price-tag is much higher than a $12-billion figure cited by Trump in his campaign and estimates as high as $15 billion from Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Trump himself gave the project a $20 billion price tag, while a Politico report, citing estimates from Capitol Hill sources, added that some lawmakers believe the price “could be as high as $50 billion when all is said and done.”
As Vox’s Matt Yglesias noted yesterday, the White House put together a budget request last year seeking $25 billion for the project.
So, putting aside related angles — I seem to recall Trump promising Mexico would pony up money for this — why is the fight over $5 billion?
As best as I can tell, Trump picked an arbitrary number that sounded good, knowing that it’d be tougher to get even House Republicans to go along with the $25 billion request the White House made a year ago.
Sure, $5 billion won’t build much of a wall, but during the president’s re-election bid, he’d be able to tell his followers, “Against all odds, I secured the funds needed to start the wall. Give me a second term, and I’ll finish the job.”
It won’t be a great argument — there’s still the whole Mexican-financing thing to consider — but Trump also knows that if he gets nothing, which now appears very likely, he’s going to have a tough time explaining to voters why he failed so spectacularly on his signature issue.
With this in mind, assuming there is a shutdown, I expect Trump to start lowering his target price, in the hopes that Democrats give him something to help him save face. I have a hunch this won’t work, but time will tell.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."