Cost of the Border Wall is Minuscule When Compared to These Government Programs

If called on to think of the most controversial proposals that candidate Trump made during the campaign, the wall along our border with Mexico would be near the top of the list. From the standpoint of the liberals, it has a number of negative features. For one thing, it interrupts the flow of illegal immigrants, a source which provides new Democratic voters. For another thing, it’s not a “feel good” sort of project for them. And it inhibits the destruction of western culture, something that the left seems to despise.

One problem the left has is that it is difficult to use cost as a talking point against the wall. For one thing, President Trump continues to insist that it will effectively be paid for by the Mexicans. For another, while there really isn’t a good reason to believe that the border wall won’t do what is claimed, it is not difficult to point to government programs that cost multiples of the estimated price tag of the wall that have been utter disasters or are on their way to being flops.

First, we need an idea as to what the cost of the border wall will be, regardless of who pays for it.

Assuming the cost is on the high end of those estimates at $15 billion, the total cost of the border wall would constitute nearly 0.4 percent of the federal government’s $3.8 trillion FY 2015 budget.

Here’s a look at a few programs that dwarf the cost of the wall while not working out has hoped:

The War on Poverty: On the 50th anniversary of the so-called War on Poverty in 2014, the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector estimated taxpayers have footed a $22 trillion bill for the effort.

As Rector also points out, however, is that in that 50-year timespan, the poverty rate was the same that was when President Lyndon B. Johnson began the “war on poverty.”

About the best the left can do with that one is argue how much worse they believe things would have been without that $22 billion expenditure. That’s a weak approach to making an argument, but there it is for all to see.

The Lockheed Martin F-35 Stealth Fighter Jet Project: According to Reuters, the cost to build the fighter jet program is estimated to be $379 billion, which would be roughly the cost of 25 border walls.

Back in December in a tweet, Trump criticized the costs of the project, which have been plagued with problems and cost overruns, and said he was asking Lockheed Martin competitor Boeing to price out a similar project.

Volumes could be written about the problems with this project. Even one of the designers of the F-16 has weighed in, referring to the F-35 as deeply flawed aircraft. Unlike the border wall, if this fighter turns out to be flop, it will get Americans, like the pilots who will fly the thing, killed.

Medicare, Medicaid Improper Payments: A 2015 Government Accountability Office report estimated in 2014 the federal government made $59.9 billion in improper Medicare payments and $17.5 billion in improper Medicaid payments for a grand total of $76.4 billion, or roughly the cost of five border walls.

That same report found that when the $76.4 billion figure was combined with 122 programs, including the EITC, that number in FY 2014 comes out to $124.7 billion in improper federal government payment, which was up from $105.8 billion a year earlier.

The government cannot figure out how much money to send to whom it would seem. Enough said.

Earned Income Tax Credit Program Improper Payments: The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is regarded by its critics as nothing more than wealth transfer program that exists under the guise of eliminating poverty.

According to the Brookings and Urban Institutes’ Tax Policy Center, in 2015 the ETIC provided an estimated $69 billion in benefits to 28 million recipients.

However, as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York pointed out, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration stated, “The IRS estimates that 23.8 percent ($15.6 billion) of EITC payments were issued improperly in Fiscal Year 2015.”

Same problem as the one just cited.

U.S. Postal Service: Even though the postal service generates revenue by charging for certain services, it still loses money that is absorbed by the taxpayer.

The U.S. Postal Service has fallen on hard times given more efficient means of communication have replaced the need for the agency’s first-class mail.

For FY 2012 alone, the USPS lost $15.9 billion. Although they have shrunk over the last four years, the agency has continued to post losses, including $3.9 billion in 2013, $5.5 billion in 2014, $5.1 billion in 2015 and $5.6 billion in 2016 for a grand total of $36 billion since 2012.

The USPS also enjoys a federal government-imposed monopoly on access to mailboxes and is exempt from local regulations and taxes that its privatized competitors do not enjoy.

The poor Post Office is often the butt of jokes, but for an organization that charges for its services to lose billions of dollars every year is a sad commentary.

NASA: Even though the last U.S. manned space flight was in 2011, NASA still has an annual budget of $18.5 billion.

A sizable chunk of that budget is dedicated to the agency’s Earth sciences division estimated at $2 billion, which has been at the forefront of climate change research.

However, a recent Guardian article by Oliver Milman anticipates funding on climate change to stripped and rededicated to deep space exploration under President Trump.

For the time being, NASA has been reliant upon the Russians to send U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station, which came at a $457.9 million cost in 2014.

That’s just embarrassing. Part of the agency’s budget goes for climate research as opposed to space research, and part of it goes to hire the Russians to give our astronauts a ride to and from the International Space Station.

And on that note, we’ll leave you with the comforting thought that these are only a few of the ways the federal government wastes enormous sums of money.

Seen in this light, the cost of the wall is not a point around which the left can rally in opposing its construction. From the standpoint of the potential benefits of keeping terrorists out of the country, the cost-benefit ratio makes the wall a strong buy.

Source: Breitbart