Posted on 02/10/2017 10:28:38 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Twelve billion here, fifteen billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. Put them together, though, and it comes close to the actual projected cost of the border wall. Reuters reports that the Department of Homeland Security’s proposal runs far ahead of the funds that Republicans in Congress planned to allocate:
President Donald Trump’s “wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border would be a series of fences and walls that would cost as much as $21.6 billion, and take more than three years to construct, based on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security internal report seen by Reuters on Thursday.
The report’s estimated price-tag is much higher than a $12-billion figure cited by Trump in his campaign and estimates as high as $15 billion from Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The report is expected to be presented to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly in coming days, although the administration will not necessarily take actions it recommends.
The plan lays out what it would take to seal the border in three phases of construction of fences and walls covering just over 1,250 miles (2,000 km) by the end of 2020.
It’s not the only variance from first projections. The new DHS study projects that the wall will be completed by late 2020, assuming Congress begins allocating the funds by May, presumably in the upcoming omnibus bill. That’s longer than the two-year estimate Kelly gave Congress just a week ago, which will certainly raise questions about his preparation for that testimony.
It also makes the issue of funding a little more fraught. Initially, Ryan indicated that the House would pursue the funding in the fall, as part of the FY2018 budget process. A two-year completion schedule at that point would have meant that the wall could be completed by late 2019, enough ahead of the presidential primaries to claim victory on a long-made promise from Republicans. A three-year-plus schedule suggests that the wall may not be complete until midway through an election year — and that gives Democrats plenty of reason to start blocking the funding, starting in two months during the omnibus FY2017 negotiations.
The time difference matters a lot more than the cash difference, though the latter is not exactly a few coins in the cushion. A nine-billion-dollar miss might seem like the lunch budget for the federal government, but it would actually be about 0.1% of all discretionary spending projected for FY2017 (although the appropriation will probably stretch out over the three-year period, too). At DHS, it’s more significant; the proposed FY2017 appropriation was $48 billion, so a $9 billion miss is rather big. Republicans might feel pressure from their conservative ranks to find the money by cutting other spending, and that will no doubt fuel opposition from Democrats.
It’s still probably better to have this fight earlier rather than later. If Ryan and McConnell wait until fall, the momentum for the project could stall, and Trump’s electoral mandate might have dissipated. Kelly better deliver it on time, and on budget, if Republicans want to reap political benefit from it. Besides, if they wait any longer, the bill’s just going to keep getting bigger and bigger.
Yeah. That is 9 thousand billion...9, 000, 000, 000, 000+...with most of it stolen through corruption.
I bet the various groups of federal “public servants “ spend more than that on office parties in given year.
That exhibition of OUTFLOW of CAPITAL as well as jobs from the US only strengthens my argument. There is nothing on that list that can’t be produced in America.(Most were until NAFTA) Your own numbers prove how we have been raped since NAFTA. + 638% FOR MEXICO and we have a trade debt of BILLIONS! Whose side are you on?
But TX is a RTW State.
Better ROI than the Big Dig, which cost more.
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My thought too.
Where can I donate?
$21 Billion? A mere pittance compared to the bloodshed and financial drain those illegal leeches cost our Country in just one year. And since they multiply like mink it will get exponentially worse each year. Build that sucker!
I’m on the side of the American consumer. Whose side are you on?
“Department of Homeland Security’s proposal runs far ahead of the funds that Republicans in Congress planned to allocate”
Not counting any revenue from Mexican sources, like forfeitures from drug cartels, border fees or taxes on money transfers.
“The new DHS study projects that the wall will be completed by late 2020, ...That’s longer than the two-year estimate Kelly gave Congress just a week ago”
Given funding in May, construction would not begin until September or October - Fiscal Year 2018. Two fiscal years of construction would take you with months of calendar year 2020.
The bottom line is that with the three phase approach, the hardest, and most effective segments of the wall will get done, and get done first. They would be large urban areas that straddle the border, like El Paso, Laredo, San Diego, and the Rio Grande Valley. Other areas are cheaper, easier, and less important.
Away from urban areas, you have a long time to detect, track and interdict. In urban areas, infiltrators can cross and blend in within minutes.
Even if the wall never gets completely built, that two year effort will fundamentally change the defensibility of that border.
Over three years, $21 billion is about three-tenths of one percent of all federal spending. Just putting it into perspective.
Lol! Like any bureaucracy only 25% of the money will actually go toward building it.
A lot of the big increase in the cost estimate, is to reimburse for private property that will be taken under eminent domain (which shows they are serious and well prepared).
In Texas, a lot of border land is privately owned, especially in the urban areas. That is a big reason that the Texas border was kicked down the road in earlier border efforts.
DHS is prioritizing the hardest and most expensive (but most effective) parts of the wall up front.
Sending a crew across a couple of hundred miles of flat Bureau of Land Management or or Indian Reservation land will be much cheaper and easier for anyone to do later.
By the time the crews are done with the high priority urbanized areas and head out across open country, the immigration situation will have already been dramatically altered by the wall.
I’m on the side of the American consumer. Whose side are you on?
I am on the side of The TRUE Americans. It is amazing to me that people who call themselves American would rather trade off our financial strength as a country for a few pennies on a purchase of an INFERIOR product. Has America become so disenfranchised and so socialized that the only thing that matters is “How CHEAP is the product.”It has been a well documented push by the left to spread our financial strength around the world which thereby weakens America. NAFTA has done nothing but destroy our strength and trade away our SOVEREIGNTY to gangs of other countries who wish our downfall. Wasn’t it enough to see the other two NAFTA members, Canada and Mexico take us to court over our RIGHT to label country of origin of the meats we consume? Naturally, the internat’l court found AGAINST us!
To HELL with inter-nation PACT agreements.we retain our SOVEREIGNTY ONLY by making individual agreements as we have done throughout our history! BILATERAL, NOT MULTILATERAL is the ONLY way to PROTECT AMERICA.
I repeat, there is nothing Mexico produces that we cannot produce here in our own country! OUR people will profit from our consumer strength, not all those who wish our downfall.
Doubtful it will take that long or cost that much with Trump on the job.
Take two Valium and call me in the morning.
The use of Davis Bacon does not prohibit non-union labor on Federally financed projects. However it does use reported wages for various trades in an area over the past year to help set a wage table that prevents the large amount of hours on a large Federal project from driving the wages down by setting a wage in line with the reported wages.
It used to be that only unions took the trouble to report accurately the wages earned in the prior year with all the forms. However, many civil works non-union contractors have been good at reporting wages and many rates published for an area are now below union wages in that area for certain trades.
I want legal construction workers to get the “area standards” wages rather than have large federal work drive down the wages for proper workmen.
The only disadvantage a non-union firm has is that as he pays the “prevailing wage” entirely “on-the-check” without the benefits portion going to a union for healthcare etc (unless he has a non-union approved benefit plan which is rare) he has to figure his unemployment compensation insurance on the entire gross amount when his union competitor only has to take that percentage charge against the gross pay to the worker and not including the benefits. IF the prevailing wage is as high as the union wage which is no longer always true, then this might work out to $0.30 to $1.20 per hour advantage to the union employer. However, the non-union worker gets all the amount, wages and benefits, on-the-check and takes home much more than the union workman working the same trade for a different employer.
I got that. The wage should be what the successful bid contractor pays his people. Make him prove all his people are legal, fine with me.
Davis-Bacon is there to make unions, with their democRat funding overhead, competitive.
By the way, as someone who spent a lifetime in construction, that cost estimate prepared by DHS “staff” is 20% to 50% inflated.
Let’s take Donald at his word and estimate that the wall is concrete. ALL OF IT. Let’s also say the wall is two and a half foot thick at the base with a 20’ wide spread footing 2.5 ‘ thick at the base. As a battered wall, or thicker at the base, the top or the wall might be 1.5 feet thick. Let’s assume the wall is 40 foot tall allowing for the footing to be 10 foot below grade in non-rock areas and cut into rock to a four foot depth where shelf rock allows. That means the wall would project about 32.5 feet on average. That means that if we allow 15% overage for ancillary structures, the wall has an estimate 5.5 cubic yards of reinforced concrete construction. Let’s assume that the wall concrete is poly-fiber reinforced as well as other security reinforcement. That means that the ready mix should cost less than $80 dollars per cubic yard as opposed to 55 you can buy it for on a large urban project. The added cost is in transport, remote batch plant cost and some amount where it is off road transport. Now lets add in security reinforcement with epoxy coating, footing excavation and prep, waste disposal, EPA approved wash-out boxes, form work, false works, and labor. So instead of 180 to 325 per cubic yard total for similar work on other federal project of this mass lets use 400 dollars per cubic yard times that 5.5 cubic yards per lineal foot.
Let’s add 8 percent for profit, 8% for design, and another ten percent for incidentals.
That’s $2822 per lineal foot at the extreme top end. That is 18.6 billion where the contractors have 1.16 billion in profit and the wall is designed and figured with the ultimately sky-is-the limit costs. Remember I have an added 10% or 1.8 billion for security, legal, drainage, electrical to guard stations etc etc.
I will pay for part of the mall as long as my name is on it. Like a brick signed for a charity.
Never took a Valium in my life. Not starting now. Suggest you sign up for Economics 101.
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