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.
Navy Seebees. They are drawing pay anyway.
21 billion dollars divided by 300 million Americans is only $70 each.
Not much at all in the big picture.
RE: Fake news. Report from Obama’s DHS.
If this is fake news, how much do you reckon the wall would really cost then?
Well, that’s the gambit that you’ve laid out very well. We’ll see what happens.
Mexico was the United States’ 3rd largest supplier of goods imports in 2015.
U.S. goods imports from Mexico totaled $295 billion in 2015, up 0.2% ($667 million) from 2014, and up 73% from 2005. U.S. imports from Mexico are up 638% from 1993 (pre-NAFTA). U.S. imports from Mexico are up 638% from 1993 (pre-NAFTA).
The top import categories (2-digit HS) in 2015 were: vehicles ($74 billion), electrical machinery ($63 billion), machinery ($49 billion), mineral fuels ($14 billion), and optical and medical instruments ($12 billion).
U.S. imports of agricultural products from Mexico totaled $21 billion in 2015, our 2nd largest supplier of agricultural imports. Leading categories include: fresh vegetables ($4.8 billion), other fresh fruit ($4.3 billion), wine and beer ($2.7 billion), snack foods ($1.7 billion), and processed fruit & vegetables ($1.4 billion).
U.S. imports of services from Mexico were an estimated $21.6 billion in 2015, 11.0% ($2.1 billion) more than 2014, and 50.0% greater than 2005 levels. It was up roughly 191% from 1993 (pre-NAFTA). Based on 2014, leading services imports from Mexico to the U.S. were in the travel, transportation, and technical and other services sectors.
https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/mexico
If true, cheap at twice the price...
That's about what we taxpayers pay to support illegal aliens in three months...
But that's irrelevant.
Remember the ice rink that New York City tried to build in NYC for ten years, spent many tens of millions and failed (the rink leaked like a sieve)?
Trump built it for 1/4 the cost in three months.
WRONG!
It was $800,000,000,000+ and to this day no one has accounted for what it "bought" that was of any use to a non-criminal.
Standard tactic of the left for anything proposed by Republicans that has a price tag, usually military, but the wall in this case:
Simply SCREAM about the price and you’re likely to get a few weasels like Rand Paul to rise up against it. True CONSERVATIVES understand the need and defend the project - others have some contorted underlying ‘principal’, where you’ll never see them complain about the $2 TRILLION we spend each year on Social Security / Medicare, never a peep from Rand’s type...but they will scream until they’re blue in the face if it’s something that the left also wants.
Best advice for our side - tell them $22 Billion, or whatever it ends up costing is NOTHING compared to just Social Security or Medicare...about one week of spending for either...and that builds the ENTIRE WALL. At least in my debates, the left has no retort to that...when you compare it to their favorite programs.
NM and CA are small pieces of border compared to other states.
Does the cost estimate account for money that the Feds will recoup through payroll and income taxes paid by (a) the companies and their workers who build the wall: and (b) the manufactures, suppliers, and transporters of the materials and equipment needed to build the wall?
NM is a “small border?”
Shut the F up and build it!!!! NOW!!!
It will actually save 5x that much PER YEAR, so just over President Trump’s firstt term (assuming its takes a year to build), it will save over $300 billion!
The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers (2013)
Executive Summary
This report estimates the annual costs of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local level to be about $113 billion; nearly $29 billion at the federal level and $84 billion at the state and local level. The study also estimates tax collections from illegal alien workers, both those in the above-ground economy and those in the underground economy. Those receipts do not come close to the level of expenditures and, in any case, are misleading as an offset because over time unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers would replace illegal alien workers.
Yeah, I low balled the number on purpose, but 5 x $21B = $105B per year, so it’s not that far off.
Tariffs are great. We need a lot more of them and massive income tax cuts.
If it is not visible from low orbit I will be disappointed.
Compared to Texas ...
I wish Pres. Trump would set up a fund that Americans can donate money for the wall. I would also like to volunteer my time for free to help in its construction.
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