President Joe Biden is defending his administration’s decision to waive 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow for construction of roughly 20 miles of U.S.-Mexico border wall.
He waived environmental protections with executive powers to expedite the process. He isnt just passively letting this happen because his hands are tied.
Would those environmental protections have allowed the wall to simply not be built, or would they have just delayed it, costing even more money for environmental reviews, changed plans, etc., when a government shutdown is imminent?
That’s a real question, to be clear, and not one the article answered one way or the other.
Even if it were the case, as they said the budget is already allocated. Why not make them waste as much of it as possible paying for stuff that isn’t building the wall that everyone knows is useless? Making it look like even more of an expensive boondoggle seems like a better strategy than paving the way through federally protected lands.
And that’s setting aside the costs of maintaining what gets built or what it would cost to remove the wall at some point.
Excellent points. This is completely braindead policy on Biden’s part. The reality is he wanted to give this money to the contractors building the wall, and it’s pathetic crony capitalism per usual.
Genuinely curious why he couldn’t go ahead and fund the wall, allow existing environmental law to block it, take that back to congress and say this project is illegal and now it is up to congress to repurpose funds.
He waived environmental protections with executive powers to expedite the process. He isnt just passively letting this happen because his hands are tied.
Would those environmental protections have allowed the wall to simply not be built, or would they have just delayed it, costing even more money for environmental reviews, changed plans, etc., when a government shutdown is imminent?
That’s a real question, to be clear, and not one the article answered one way or the other.
Even if it were the case, as they said the budget is already allocated. Why not make them waste as much of it as possible paying for stuff that isn’t building the wall that everyone knows is useless? Making it look like even more of an expensive boondoggle seems like a better strategy than paving the way through federally protected lands.
And that’s setting aside the costs of maintaining what gets built or what it would cost to remove the wall at some point.
Excellent points. This is completely braindead policy on Biden’s part. The reality is he wanted to give this money to the contractors building the wall, and it’s pathetic crony capitalism per usual.
He has to do it at the end of the year to comply with the order.
The end of the year is in 3 months.
Genuinely curious why he couldn’t go ahead and fund the wall, allow existing environmental law to block it, take that back to congress and say this project is illegal and now it is up to congress to repurpose funds.
He has to utilize executive fiat to circumvent normal environmental regulation procedures? What exactly do you think would happen if he didn’t?