There are a plethora of costs, both hidden and hideously blatant, that come with having a unsecured southern border, and Americans are beginning to bear the brunt of just such a situation under the Biden administration.
This isn’t exactly unexpected, of course, as Democratic administrations have a tendency to increase the brazenness and the sheer amount of people coming over the border…both legally and illegally.
The strain on the American economy, the human toll of the trafficking that occurs – these are just some of the costs of this invasion.
But there are even some more literal costs to refusing to build a border wall, too, and they are coming out of the taxpayers’ pocket.
While the border remains a total disaster, the Biden administration spends about $130,000 per day, nearly $50 million a year, to “do nothing” with former President Donald Trump’s unused border wall materials.
The administration pays private landowners to store 20,000 unused border wall sections at 20 project sites.
Other costs associated with storing the border wall materials included security cameras, electrical and stormwater materials, and overhead lights, Fox News reported.
Some congressional leaders are up in arms over the expense.
Republican Senate Armed Forces Committee members sent a letter to assistant secretary of defense for homeland Defense and hemispheric affairs Melissa Dalton detailing the situation.
“Every day, the Department of Defense pays $130,000 to store, maintain, and secure these materials,” the senators wrote.
“Since you were sworn in as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs a year ago, you have allowed the Department to pay over $47 million to store these panels,” they said.
Dalton was asked why the Defense Department did not dispose of the unused materials.
The Defence department is required to remove such materials in coordination with the Defense Logistics Agency to reutilize, resell, or demilitarize military property.
“We assume you are well aware of this capability since the Department used the program to transfer 1,700 border wall panels to the state of Texas early in your tenure,” the senators wrote.
The solution to cutting this expense from our government’s already-inflated budget would have been to continue to build that border wall as the previous administration intended. Instead, the Democrats decided to play politics and we now find ourselves throwing taxpayer dollars away with no plan to stop any time soon.
