The daily cost of storing the border wall materials is $130,000 daily. This is such a waste. Why didn’t they just finish the wall that was already purchased?
Republican members of the Senate Armed Forces Committee — using details provided to them in a request for information to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) — sent a letter Wednesday evening to the Defense Department asking why nearly $50 million is being spent each year to store the Trump-era border materials.
Led by ranking member Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and signed by Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, along with nearly every other Republican on the committee, the senators wrote that they “are disturbed to learn the Department of Defense is paying private landowners to store border wall materials procured under the Trump Administration instead of fortifying the southern border with those materials.””At present, over 20,000 border wall sections, otherwise known as bollard panels, lie unused at 20 project sites across southern Arizona and New Mexico,” the senators said in the letter addressed to Melissa Dalton, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs. “Every day, the Department of Defense pays $130,000 to store, maintain, and secure these materials. 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. The Department of Defense should not be incurring these daily charges but should be using these funds to bolster national security.” Read the entire article.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY