Plans to fund a wall between the United States and Mexico are starting to take clearer shape as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office. Politico reported this month that congressional Republicans and the new administration are contemplating a bid to appropriate money through an open-ended 2006 law authorizing the construction of fencing. The idea would save GOP lawmakers the chore of crafting new border security legislation that could earn bipartisan Senate support. After all, such a statute already received that backing a decade ago.

A majority of Senate Democrats, including their new leader, Chuck Schumer, approved the Secure Fence Act. The legislation called for double-layer fences, “additional physical barriers,” and new surveillance equipment along five particular stretches of the southern border. Endorsing it may have amounted to necessary election-year politics. But some lawmakers didn’t just allow their votes to do the talking. “Democrats are solidly behind controlling the border, and we support the border fence,” California senator Dianne Feinstein declared at the time. She is one of seven Democrats in the upper chamber today to have supported the measure—one lawmaker short of the eight that Republicans need to meet a 60-vote threshold to secure new money for that wall. It’s a fact the majority is sure to dangle before the public as Congress takes up the issue.