The Joe Biden Administration is spending $3 million per day to keep the former Trump Administration’s southern border wall from completing construction, one Republican Senator says.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) brought the issue back into the limelight during an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on May 26 as she utilized the outlet as a venue to promote her proposed legislation—Border’s Unused Idle and Lying Dormant Inventory Transfer Act, aka the BUILD IT Act.
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Ernst’s assertion on the $3 billion figure is cited from an undated Senate Minority Staff Report issued by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) of the Government Operations and Border Management committee, which estimated that the current administration’s halting of border wall construction, one of Joe Biden’s first acts after taking his oath of office on Jan. 20, 2021, has cost taxpayers more than $2 billion.
“By the end of the Trump Administration, $10 billion had been transferred to U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) accounts for border wall construction and related projects,” the Report reads.
“As of June 2021, the Biden Administration has wasted roughly 20 percent ($2 billion) of that $10 billion on suspension and termination costs related to border wall contracts.”
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The Report adds that the $3 million per day figure is calculated based only on the costs “to guard steel, concrete, and other materials in the desert”
Findings additionally found that in the beginning, the Department of Defense was actually spending $6 million per day. The figure halved only after contractors began laying off staff members.
It added, “Between January 20, 2021 and July 15, 2021, GOBM minority staff estimates that DOD has paid contractors on the seven projects receiving 2808 funds between $618 million and $708 million.”
“These costs will continue to accrue until the contracts are terminated. DOD estimates that termination of contracts will take roughly 12 to 18 months.”
Ernst said her proposed BUILD IT Act instead “turns over those unused materials, that were purchased to construct the southern border barrier, to any state that wishes to finish the job. What we have done — we have purchased these materials.”
She added, “Joe Biden canceled the construction of a border wall along the southern border, calling it a waste of money…So why are we paying people to watch over materials that will not be used in this administration, according to him? Why don’t we turn it over then to the state governments who do wish to construct a border wall?”
In April of 2021, Vision Times reported that federally funded broadcaster NPR had stated in January of 2020 that the cost of Trump’s southern border wall project was a mere $11 billion—a figure simply dwarfed by an array of multi-trillion dollar socialist-style spending bills enacted by the new Presidency.
NPR claimed at the time that the border wall’s price tag was astronomical because it happened to be the same as that of a nuclear aircraft carrier, of which the United States already has 11.
A May 4 report by Tuscon.com stated that more than a quarter billion dollars in unused materials for the border wall project have laid dormant during an article on how the Federal Government had donated $6 million worth to the State of Texas.
The supplies—amounting to 950 truckloads—were sent to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tuscon for processing, some of which were distributed to a base in California.
The article stated that the donation was composed of 1,757 bollard panels originally meant for the wall, but that the $6 million valuation was only on paper.
“An article in the Atlantic estimated the cost of bollards at about $9,000 a piece, which would mean the donation to Texas cost nearly $16 million,” Tucson.com added.
