Border: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pointed to a 2006 law requiring 700 miles of double-layer border fencing. Unfortunately, in 2007 another Texas Republican helped the Democrat Congress change that.
Presidential candidate Ted Cruz told Fox's Sean Hannity, "Existing federal law is quite robust" on border security, and "There should be 700 miles of double-layer fencing built along our southern border."
He added: "The Obama administration has about 30 miles built. If I am elected president, we will build it. What is missing is the presidential will to get it done."
Americans like to think that when their elected representatives pass a law, it's a law. If only.
It's true that in 2006, the Republican-controlled House and a large bipartisan majority in the Senate passed, and President Bush signed, the Secure Fence Act, requiring 700 additional miles of double chain-link and barbed-wire fences with lights and camera poles.
But in 2007, the Homeland Security Department complained of being, er, fenced in, arguing that different types of terrain required different barriers.
So Cruz's predecessor, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, authored an amendment that DHS would not be required "to install fencing . .. if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location."
The Democrat-controlled Congress passed it.
In 2011, addressing supporters in El Paso, President Obama jeered that Republicans "wanted a fence. Well, the fence is now basically complete." Audience members, as the official WhiteHouse.gov transcript shows, shouted "Tear it down!" and "They're racist!"
"Maybe they'll need a moat," the president added. "Maybe they want alligators in the moat. They'll never be satisfied."
What the president did in that speech was, put simply, to lie — claiming to have built the "fence" that Republicans enacted into law, without noting that he and his fellow Democrats in Congress changed it to require much less effective fencing.
Most of the fencing that Obama claims "is now basically complete" consists of vehicle barriers that people can easily hop over, or single-layer fences.
Cruz is absolutely right that what's missing is presidential will. Under the amended law, the next chief executive could make 700 miles of double-layer fencing a priority — and tell DHS to shut up and build it.
