The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that President-elect Joe Biden could save the U.S. roughly $2.6 billion if he stops construction of impeached president Donald Trump’s racist and expensive border fencing immediately after taking office. The initial savings is an estimated $3.3 billion, but officials said they believe the incoming administration will have to pay roughly $700 million to terminate agreements with private contractors building the monstrosity.
What’s been long clear is that Trump’s wall has been a disastrous, expensive monument to hatred—and a monument that we, not Mexico, have had to pay for. What’s also clear in light of this report is that terminating those federal contracts and ending construction on Day One of a Biden administration isn’t just the right thing to do, but could also save the nation billions that could possibly be used for real emergencies facing the nation.
As The Post notes, only about a third of the $15 billion the Trump administration has been using to build the thing “was provided by Congress through the standard appropriations process.” The rest, swindled from other areas of the government. But really, swindled from us. Even as litigation over this money grab is now heading to the Supreme Court, he’s still inexplicably claiming that Mexico will pay for it, more than five years after he first uttered the lie as a presidential candidate.
Back here in reality, the president-elect has previously pledged that “[t]here will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” and has wide latitude to immediately end this thing, despite the fretting from some media about stopping construction dead in its tracks. I mean, that’s what we want! And the fact that the acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner is openly railing against that plan is a good indication that’s the right thing to do.
“Let’s consider the cost directly to American taxpayers when we walk away, which will probably be billions of dollars that have already been invested and assigned to a contract,” Mark Morgan said according to The Post, claiming it would be “waste of taxpayer money.”
Mark, the “waste of taxpayer money” has been this entire project. And not just a wasteful project, but a corrupt one. Aside from the money-swindling, The New York Times recently reported that two whistleblowers alleged that contractors constructing the monstrosity smuggled in armed Mexican guards to watch worksites building the racist wall Trump’s using in his quest to keep Mexicans out, going so far as to create a dirt road to help expedite the unlawful crossings. “The employees also accused the companies of submitting fraudulent invoices for border wall costs and ‘hiding’ the full profits of the project,” the report said.
“The ironies of the border,” reporter Dianne Solis tweeted. “Armed Mexicans smuggled in to guard wall.” Nor has Mark addressed his own “waste of taxpayer money” in the form of using his government position to campaign for Trump’s losing presidential campaign, something now under investigation by the chief of Office of Special Counsel’s Hatch Act unit.
The Trump administration is reportedly spending its final weeks rushing construction before Biden takes office, destroying precious land even when it’s clear it doesn’t have enough time to put up any fencing in that specific area. The Center for Biological Diversity’s Laiken Jordahl, who has used social media to document this disaster (as seen in the tweet above), has called it “destruction for destruction's sake.” Stop construction, end the contracts, and tear the motherfucker down.