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grumpyduck

(6,197 posts)
Sun Jan 20, 2019, 01:21 PM Jan 2019

$5.7 billion is only the down payment for the wall

I wrote about this yesterday, but the post got buried in the avalanche of new OPs, so I'll post it again. I believe it's an important fact, and one that the press seems to be ignoring in their focus on "the wall vs the shutdown." I wrote my three members of congress about it, but don't expect to get back anything besides a form letter.

From Fortune magazine last year:

Estimates range from as low as $8 billion to as much as $67 billion or more, depending on whom you ask and the number of miles of wall that get built. Based on Trump’s 2017 budget request for $2.6 billion to plan, design and build 75 miles of wall, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill’s office estimated the per-mile cost would be about $37 million, or nearly $67 billion for the entire 2,000-mile border. Congressional Republicans have said they expect a wall to cost from $12 billion to $15 billion, based on the cost to rebuild existing border fencing covering a third of that distance. These projections, however, don’t include the cost of land acquisition.


http://fortune.com/2018/01/19/donald-trump-border-wall/

Yes, I know... the $67 billion figure may not be dead-on-the-button accurate, and the estimate was prepared by a Democrat, so therefore it's BS, and it was reported in a leftist magazine, so it's fake news, and all that. But for anyone who bothers thinking a little bit, the message will be loud and clear: that wall will cost a hell of a lot more than the $5.7 billion we keep hearing about.

And, sadly, once a new administration takes over and realizes that it's not working, and that costs continue to skyrocket, and decides to stop the project, all that taxpayer money will have gone down the drain and people and drugs will continue to come in illegally.

Please -- please -- bring this up to your own representatives and your local media. It needs to be up there with all the other stuff they keep repeating.
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$5.7 billion is only the down payment for the wall (Original Post) grumpyduck Jan 2019 OP
The Wall..when paid for by the Mexican Government... asiliveandbreathe Jan 2019 #1
Democrats should demand a full cost-benefit-analysis and cost-projection. DetlefK Jan 2019 #2
Well, that's exactly why I wrote my reps grumpyduck Jan 2019 #3
Yep. It will cost ten times that. nt miyazaki Jan 2019 #4

DetlefK

(16,423 posts)
2. Democrats should demand a full cost-benefit-analysis and cost-projection.
Sun Jan 20, 2019, 01:34 PM
Jan 2019

Where does this number even come from, "$5.7 billion"? How did the WH arrive at this number?

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