The spending bill finally signed into law by impeached president Donald Trump late last month contained nearly $1.4 billion for border fencing—a stupid, wasteful, and frankly insulting move, considering how many families are still suffering after receiving a pittance of $600 in survival checks (that is, if they were even eligible). Border Report says that House Democrats initially included zero dollars for the wall, but were forced to compromise with Republicans who threatened to torpedo the whole package.
But with Joe Biden set to take office in just over two weeks, a Texas Democrat from the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee said that because the bill’s text doesn’t include the word “wall” (it’s unclear if that was intentional), the president-elect doesn’t have to use the funds for Trump’s pet project. “There is no definition of ‘barrier systems’ and, therefore, the Biden administration can use that for so many options,” Rep. Henry Cuellar told Border Report.
That’s all good, but we also know that Trump is a vindictive, cartoon villain asshole who is purposefully blowing up pristine mountains in the borderlands even though he doesn’t have enough time left in office to put up new wall there. So what if he rushes to, say, enter new contracts with that money in the two weeks and change he has left as president? That can be undone, House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee chair Lucille Roybal-Allard noted. She also said that she and fellow Democrats had “pushed back hard against this funding,” according to Border Report.
“Biden will be able to cancel those contracts with little loss of funding since the contracts will have been signed so recently,” she wrote in a memo according to Border Report, “and the federal government has wide discretion to cancel contracts for convenience.” Border Report said that Biden has several options for the money, including returning to Congress and asking legislators to “rescind and re-appropriate the remaining funds for another purpose at U.S. Customs and Border Protection or other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.”
However, we also know that CBP is an abusive agency that believes it’s accountable to no one, and because of its own actions, should be getting less money, not more: “Since 2003, the budget of CBP, which includes both the Border Patrol and operations at ports of entry, has also nearly tripled, rising from $5.9 billion in FY 2003 to a high of $17.1 billion in FY 2019,” American Immigration Council reported last year. So there’s gotta be better ways to spend this money, folks, because the border is already militarized as is.
Biden also has wide latitude to cancel existing contracts already building Trump’s wall, despite fretting from some media about stopping construction dead in its tracks. The Washington Post reported last month that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that Biden could in fact save the U.S. roughly $2.6 billion if he stops construction 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.
Trump’s wall has been a disastrous, corrupt, and expensive monument to hatred—and a monument that we, not Mexico, have had to pay for. In the process, it’s cut through the lands of indigenous peoples, disrupted natural ecosystems, and taken human lives. Terminating those federal contracts, ending construction, and tearing down Trump’s wall won’t just save the nation billions that could possibly be used for real emergencies; it’s is an important step in beginning to mend at least some of the damage created in the name of racism.
