 Counter-protester Demietrich Baker jumps over a wall erected by Washington State University College Republicans on campus on Oct. 19, 2016 in Pullman, Wash. (Geoff Crimmins/Moscow-Pullman Daily News via AP) By Max Ehrenfreund All Sean Spicer wanted to do was explain to reporters why it wouldn't be all that hard to get Mexico to pay for President Trump's wall along the southern border. "There have been questions about how the president could pay for the wall," the White House press secretary said Thursday. "We've been asked over and over again, 'How could you possibly do this? There's no way that Mexico will pay for it.' Here's one way. Boom. Done." It turns out, though, that the plan Spicer suggested is the economic equivalent of the U.S. government borrowing more money. Future generations of Americans would in effect be footing the bill, not Mexico. "It really is a form of borrowing, disguised borrowing, by the government," said Alan Viard, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. In trying to come up with what he called "an easy way" for Mexico to pay, Spicer might have inadvertently demonstrated the point that analysts, commentators and pundits have been making for months. There really is no obvious way for Trump to force Mexico to pay the tens of billions of dollars a wall along the border would likely cost. Spicer's confusion is understandable, though. The plan he was referring to is a complex proposal from Republicans in the House for a new kind of tax that does appear, at least superficially, to yield more money for the federal government. Here's how it would work.
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