The Finish It Act would require the federal government to either use materials already paid for with taxpayer dollars to build a border wall as intended or transfer them to state governments who will use the materials for their own border barrier construction.
Since the legislation, which is part of the Senate's defense bill, was introduced in May, Team Biden has been quietly auctioning off the border wall construction material essentially for peanuts.
Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of unused parts purchased during President Donald Trump’s administration are being auctioned off, according to an online auction house specializing in military surplus.
GovPlanet has sold 81 lots of steel “square structural tubes” for about $2 million. The auction site avoids admitting that the tubes were intended for use as vertical bollards in the Trump border barrier’s 30-foot-tall panels.
The GovPlanet auction schedule for the border material picked up significantly in May, when Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker first introduced the Finish It Act, and increased again this month, days after the Senate’s defense bill passed on a bipartisan vote.
On Tuesday, GovPlanet sold 729 of the 28-foot-tall hollow beams, They were sold in five separate lots for an average $212 apiece and a total of $154,200.
Thirteen more lots are set to be auctioned on Aug. 23 and Aug. 30.
Money from the auctions goes back to the Pentagon's budget and GovPlanet is reportedly under strict instructions to keep the border-wall auctions hush-hush.
“We are legally not allowed to mention these are the border wall materials, or we could lose our jobs,” a GovPlanet source told the Daily Upside, the financial newsletter that first reported the ongoing sales.
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While the lot listings avoid identifying the tubes’ original purpose, viewers of the company’s Instagram page weren’t fooled.
“Good for building a wall,” a user called honest_jake wrote Aug. 3 under a GovPlanet Instagram post touting the sale of “industrial steel tubing” — an entry that was deleted from the social media site on Friday.
“Why don’t you put that up instead of selling it,” added Brian Prewitt. “This is why taxpayers are just about done paying taxes.”
Republicans slammed Team Biden for what they see as an end run around Congress.
“This sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame,” Wicker told the New York Post, denouncing the move as “outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.”
“Leaving the border open to terrorists while selling border security materials at a loss is Bidenomics in a nutshell,” said Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a co-sponsor of the Finish It Act.
“The pennies made from selling the border wall will not be enough to pay the families who suffer from a criminal act committed by someone who crossed our open borders during the Biden administration,” said Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma.
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