Senator Warren Proposes Using $10B in Wall Funding to Address Coronavirus

By Preston Huennekens | FAIR Take | February 2020

Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren introduced a ridiculous bill calling for the reallocation of wall funding to fight the coronavirus. Titled the Prioritizing Pandemic Prevention Act, this bill will strip all funding from southern border wall construction and direct it to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for the purposes of battling COVID-19.

You heard that right – Warren wants to open our borders to stop a worldwide pandemic.

At the time of this writing, coronavirus claimed the lives of at least 2,859 people, mainly in the city of Wuhan, China where COVID-19 originated. There are more than 83,700 confirmed cases worldwide. The outbreak continues to spread far beyond China, with cases now in India, Australia, Europe, Brazil, and the United States. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) continues to warn that “the potential public health threat posed by COVID-19 is high, both globally and to the United States.”

In early February, the United States banned foreigners who travelled to China from entering the country and forced returning Americans into quarantine. Restricting travel and closing borders is one of the most effective ways a country can defend itself against a pandemic in today’s global economy.

Human smugglers are bringing over in increasingly large number of Chinese illegal aliens across the southern border as a way to avoid airport screening. For Chinese nationals without visas, it is increasingly easier to enter the United States unlawfully by flying to Mexico (or another Latin American country) and sneaking across the border with a smuggler.

Physical barriers are an important tool in stopping illicit pedestrian traffic. These become even more important when the U.S. faces a pandemic as deadly as COVID-19, which has no working vaccine.

Senator Warren’s bill calls for a down payment of $10 billion in coronavirus funding by “redirecting funds from border wall funding at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Defense (DOD).” Her press release notes that this is not the first time she has opposed the President’s efforts to secure the southern border, highlighting her support of S. 668 which would “nullify President Trump’s executive order that a border wall be built.”

Senator Warren certainly knows that her bill will go nowhere in the Republican-controlled Senate. This bill is simply a vehicle to showcase her displeasure with President’s Trump’s immigration agenda. Combatting COVID-19 can only come by way of bipartisan negotiations for an emergency spending bill.

You can read Senator Warren’s two-page bill for yourself by clicking this link.