[exmarine]

...it would cost $6 billion a year, plus monitoring equipment, stations, etc, bringing the cost to $10 billion. Not an outrageous amount, but the fact is, there's no appetite in congress for this. Tancredo is great, but very few others are willing to touch this. Pandering occurs on both sides of the congressional aisle.

How much is national security and survival worth? Besides, it's laughable to use cost as an issue considering that the profligate GOP throws taxpayer money around like dirty laundry on all sorts of liberal socialist programs.

[NYC Republican]

How much is national security and survival worth? Besides, it's laughable to use cost as an issue considering that the profligate

I agree with most of what you said, but the reality is, cost IS an issue with Congress. It's a huge hurdle to overcome, not only do you require enough congressman to support a very controversial topic (controversial because they would feel they'd lose votes), but they also have to justify a fairly high cost. I'm not sure there's enough of an appetite out there for it.