congress setting standards for a wall they didn’t approve?
“congress setting standards for a wall they didn’t approve?”
Congress has been appropriating some money every year for border wall - just not enough to decisively fix the problem.
Paul Ryan got a wedge added to the ten year baseline budget - about $1.4 billion per year (which grows to about $1.6 billion by the last year, with inflation).
The 2018 and 2019 appropriations were almost all earmarked for building barrier in the Rio Grande Valley. Those appropriations however, included certain restrictions. 2018 included five areas were the money could not be spent to build barrier (Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge, Bentsen State Park, National Butterfly Center, La Lomita Chapel and the SpaceX facilities East of Brownsville, right near the Gulf of Mexico). The 2019 appropriations included the requirement to coordinate barrier with local Governments in five areas (Roma, Escobares, La Grulla, Salineno, and Rio Grande City).
Henry Cuellar (D, Laredo) has been the main driver for inserting these little sabotage amendments into the appropriations. Apparently he is plotting another little landmine for the 2020 appropriation, for cemeteries (known and unknown) that might exist along the route.
So really Congress is just setting the standards (and exemptions) for the areas that it is funding. One possibility that has been discussed, is that the Administration might use some of the other funding that it has taken from other sources, to build barrier in the gaps exempted by the appropriations. So far, there is no sign that they intend to do that - probably more of a fight than it is worth at this point. Many officers now required to saturate a hundred miles of heavy vegetation where barrier is being built, will be freed up to focus on a few remaining miles of gaps - which themselves will still be getting powerful new technology, essentially everything but the bollards.
The really major effort is getting done. After this hundred miles in the Rio Grande Valley, everything else is relatively easier, cheaper, and less operationally important. It was the biggest single battle in the war to secure the Southern Border, and victory has been fully funded, and already awarded on contract.