Biden quietly sells off border wall parts to thwart GOP push to use them
Biden’s administration quietly auctions off millions of dollars worth of unused components from former President Trump’s border wall at peanuts in an apparent attempt to avoid pending legislation before Congress.
GovPlanet is an online auction site that specializes in military surplus. Since April, it has sold 81 tons of “square structural tubes”, which are intended to be used as vertical bollards for the 30-foot-tall border barrier panels. The sale brought in around $2 million.
GovPlanet made $154,200 on Tuesday for 729 hollow beams measuring 28 feet tall, sold in 5 separate lots at an average price of $212 each.
On August 23 and 30, 2013, thirteen more lots will be sold.
The Democrat-led Senate, however, passed a Republican sponsored bill last month as part of the annual defense appropriations package. This was to force Biden into extending the border wall in order to stop the migrant crisis from worsening at the US-Mexico Border.
Republicans claim that since Biden took office, up to $300 million in wall components funded by taxpayers have rusted.
The Finish It Act requires the federal government to use the materials for new border wall construction or give the remainder of the stock to states such as Texas, who can use it in their own border protection projects.
The Post reported that the Biden administration has rushed to remove the leftover wall before the GOP-led House could pass a bill matching the version passed by the Senate and become law.
Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said: “This sale was a wasteful decision made by the Biden Administration that serves only as further proof of their lack of shame.” The bill’s sponsor told The Post that the sale was “outrageous and behind-the scenes maneuvering”.
“Bidenomics is a bidding system that leaves the border wide open for terrorists, while at the same time selling border security products at a loss,” said Sen. Tom Cotton. ), a co-sponsor.
James Lankford, a senator from Oklahoma, said that the pennies from the sale of the border wall would not be enough to compensate the families who suffered from criminal acts committed by people who crossed our borders while the Biden administration was in power.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, called the fire sale’reckless.
Stefanik stated, “Our borders are still being overrun by an unprecedented amount of illegal immigrants. This is turning every district into border districts and compromising national security.”
The auction schedule for GovPlanet increased dramatically in May when Wicker introduced the Finish It Act. It also increased this month after the Senate defense bill was passed by a bipartisan vote.
A DOD spokesperson identified the tubes in an outdoor storage area in Pima County (Ariz.) as “excess wall materials.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has already transferred around $154 million of the approximately $260 million of bollards panels and other materials, according to Lt. Colonel Devin T. Robinson. He used Defense Department terminology for the process of transferring military surplus items to commercial sellers or the trash pile.
The Pentagon budget receives the profits from the sale.
GovPlanet has strict instructions not to reveal the border-wall link.
The Daily Upside financial newsletter, which first reported on the sales, was told by a source at GovPlanet that “we are not allowed to say these are border wall materials or we could be fired.”
While the lot listings are careful to not identify the tubes’ original use, Instagram users of the company weren’t duped.
A user named honest_jake commented Aug. 3, under an Instagram post by GovPlanet promoting the sale of “industrial tubing,” — a posting that was removed from the social media website Friday.
Brian Prewitt added, “Why not put it up instead of selling?” “This is the reason tax payers have just about finished paying taxes.”
Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., who represents the border districts where the wall components that were auctioned have been sitting idle for years, slammed Biden’s “refusal” to act.
Ciscomani stated that the federal government should use every tool available to protect our border. “Instead, these materials have been wasted, first collecting dirt in the desert, and now being sold.”
Senate Republicans slammed Biden in 2021 for spending $2 billion for storage costs and termination charges as he tried winding down Trump’s contracts for wall building. This year, congressional investigators discovered that the DOD continued to pay $130,000 per day for storage fees on unused wall components.
The former president Donald Trump promised to build “an impenetrable physical, tall, powerful, beautiful Southern border wall” in his 2016 presidential campaign.
During his presidency, he spent $15 billion to install 450 miles of barriers. An additional 250 miles were still being installed at the end.
In his inaugural day presidential proclamation Biden halted the construction of all border walls, calling Trump’s plan “a waste” and “not a serious solution”.
Asylum seekers rushed to the US-Mexico Border almost immediately to take advantage Biden’s lax enforcement policy.
US Customs and Border Protection reported around 1.7 millions migrant encounters at the southern border during fiscal year 2021 and an unprecedented 2.4 million in fiscal 2022.
According to the agency, nearly 1.8 million migrants have been encountered in the first nine-month period of the current fiscal. This is on pace to surpass the shocking 2022 total.
Estimates suggest that 2.6 million asylum seekers, or “gotaways”, have made their way to the United States under Biden’s administration. This has flooded cities such as New York where, each month, more than 10,000 migrants arrive to demand food, shelter and social services. The municipal budget is being shredded.
“President Biden does not care about taxpayer dollars or how his open borders are bankrupting entire communities in the United States that pay for his failures,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, (R-SI/Brooklyn), a Brooklyn lawmaker who is fighting to ban migrant shelters on city parks and military sites.
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