Turns out not building a wall is almost as costly as building one.
President Joe Biden is spending at least $3 million a day on contractors “to watch steel rust in the desert,” Senate Republicans have found — as he tries to put a stop to former President Trump’s planned wall along the US-Mexico border, despite the ongoing crisis there.
“President Biden is paying professional construction contractors to babysit metal to the tune of $2 billion and counting, while at the same time we’ve seen a 20-year high number of migrants crossing our open border,” said Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.)
A report issued this week by GOP members of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management found that at least 20 percent of the $10 billion received by the Pentagon for border wall construction has instead been spent on guarding construction sides and terminating active contracts.
With the termination process set to take up to 18 months to complete, the report found, the costs will keep adding up.
“This waste of taxpayer resources threatens military readiness and national security,” the report concluded.
Republicans and others have blamed the lack of border barriers, along with Biden’s lax admission policies, for a surge of illegal immigration in recent months.
Trump constructed 453 miles of new and replacement wall during his term in office, with nearly 300 additional miles planned or under construction.
The federal government counted almost 190,000 people trying to illegally cross the southwest border into the United States in June, a 5 percent increase from May — putting US Customs and Border Protection on track to make its 1 millionth border stop of the year this month.
Not since 2006 has that number of apprehensions been hit in any calendar year — when the milestone was reached in December.