The most detailed estimate is $25B to build the wall. That’s 1/16th of what Obama spent on “shovel ready jobs” in the stimulus package. It’s less than 1/5th what CA wants to spend on high speed rail which will lose money every year. It’d a small fraction of the $120B the pentagon admits it wastes every year. California alone spends close to ~$10B/yr on K-12 education of kids of illegals. That doesn’t count other programs.
Suddenly, $25B on a wall seems like a bargain.
$25B to build a 3.145 million meter wall does not sound realistic at all. Especially when you have to consider land acquisition, the need to build out infrastructure to get materials all along the path, challenges of the different terrain, etc. It’s off by at least an order of magnitude. Also what would be the annual cost to maintain the wall?
Finally what problem is the wall solving that cannot be solved by a more cost effective solution?
Spending money on border security…fine. The only reason our co-conspirator in chief want a wall is because he promised a wall and his base is increasingly teasing him for not being able to deliver. It’s become a phallic symbol. In 2018 there are more robust and efficient ways to protect our border.
Hadrian’s wall, 128 AD
That was predictable. Rejection of anything that doesn’t align with your alternate reality.
Jeez. Marcus you are really projecting. Do the math. @elt1 did the math for you up there. I don’t know what’s up with conservatives of today that they shut themselves off from any information that doesn’t align with their point of view and disregards majority opinion on info. Here’s what elt1 said:
You obviously cannot defend the $25B number so you attack and accuse others of living in an alternate realty.
Here’s a recent article on the cost of the wall:
No. There’s no point in it, since you’ll just ignore the info and pivot.
Politifact rated this estimate the most accurate.
Again you cherry pick data that is already outdated and wrong. Here’s a much more recent GAO report from this year rather then speculative data that was fed with wrong information by the Trump administration that lowballed the cost of the wall.
All the recent analysis is that the wall will cost way more. Hence I pointed you to a recent article.
Are you going to believe a non-partisan organization (the GAO) or just accuse the GAO of living in the same reality as most of us?
You should have caught this as we kept telling you this. The politifact article was from Apr 2017 and based their numbers on the Trump administration estimation of cost. It’s in the article itself:
When the GAO did their study, they pointed out the same things @elt1 and I did. That there are many other issues that the administration had did zero planning on, for example:
Here’s a really interesting line in the GAO report:
They are averaging about $50M per mile of wall constructed. Extrapolate it out to 3000 Miles.
For 2019 they are requesting:
$1.6B for 65 Miles.
Get out of the conservative news bubble and read some facts Marcus
The Border is only 2000 miles. But a great part is the Rio Grande. The wall would be impossible there. Unless we put it in the Texas side and cede the river to Mexico. Much like Browns train nobody has actually drawn plans and really estimated the cost. In fact the height and look of the wall is undetermined. Hi tech surveillance is probably more effective with more added fences. But the Soviets could not keep Eastern Europeans from escaping and they were willing to shoot wall crossers.
Unless we go to war with Mexico illegals will continue to cross.
Number of illegal immigrants is falling. Median age of Mexicans is rising and older people are not as likely to take up the challenge of crossing deserts. Walls are just medieval tech costing tons. It’s symbolic more than anything.
The Rio Grande is over 1200 miles. I don’t think even Trump is proposing a wall there. In many places it can be waded. Impossible to defend. 350 million people cross legally. Pretty tough border to defend. Many commuters cross twice a day.
Interesting. I saw it the opposite way–that it was a mature thing to do. Instead of spending the time fighting with Schumer about who’s at fault, he threw Schumer into a position where Trump was saying “Well, I’M for border security” and by implication Schumer wasn’t. Even though he said he was.
The study you posted says $18B for 722 miles of top priority locations. There’s only 1,150 miles or border without natural barrier or existing wall. If the same cost per mile is used, that’s $29B.
The crazy high estimates are assuming building brand new wall across the entire length of the border which isn’t the plan. They are what’s called hyperbole to exaggerate the cost.
$18B to cover all the high priority areas seems like a bargain compared to what CA spends on educating the kids of illegals. That’s less than 2-years of education cost.
