The latest proposal to fund the border wall is taxing porn
A Republican state lawmaker from Arizona has come up with a novel way to fund part of the wall Donald Trump wants to build between the US and Mexico.
State representative Gail Griffin recently introduced a new bill that would charge $20 to access porn websites. The proceeds would be used to build a barrier on Arizona’s southern border.
Trump’s insistence that any new government spending bill include $5.7 billion for a physical wall on the border has led to the longest US government shutdown in history. Republicans continue to back him. Democrats, meanwhile, are demanding that the government be reopened without funding for a wall, before Congress negotiates on additional immigration and border spending. Most Americans don’t want to pay for a border wall.
Griffin’s bill proposes forcing internet distributors to block access to all “obscene” content on the internet to anyone in the state. The category is defined in detail:
In order to view such content, users would need to prove they are 18, and pay a one-time fee of at least $20 to the Arizona Commerce Authority. The money would be used to start the “John McCain human trafficking and child exploitation prevention fund,” the bill says; the fund’s very first beneficiary is “a border wall between Mexico and this state.”
The bill would need to pass two-thirds of the Arizona’s Republican-controlled state legislature; Democrats currently have 29 of 60 seats. The Free Speech Coalition, which lobbies for the adult entertainment industry, immediately dubbed it “unconstitutional.”
Griffin, an 84-year-old former real estate broker, has been a member of the state legislature since the 1990s. In order to raise the $5.7 billion that Trump wants for the wall, 285 million people would need to pay the $20 fee that her bill recommends, which is over forty times the population of Arizona.
Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief, our free daily newsletter with the world’s most important and interesting news.
More stories from Quartz:
