The Biden administration has been selling off billions of dollars of structural material that would have gone into building former President Donald Trump's border wall for pennies on the dollar in auctions, with the sales ramping up while legislation is pending in Congress to extend the wall.
GovPlanet, an online auction company that specializes in the sales of military surplus materials, has been used to sell 81 lots of steel square structural tubes, the materials that would have been used as vertical bollards to hold up a border wall's 30-foot-tall panels, reports the New York Post.
The sales so far have brought in about $2 million. Tuesday, the website sold 729 of the 28-foot long hollow beams for $154,200, bringing in an average of $212 each for five separate lots.
There are 13 more lots that are scheduled for auction on Aug. 23 and Aug. 30.
However, in July, when the Senate passed its annual defense appropriations, it passed a GOP bill aimed at forcing President Joe Biden to cut the growing number of migrants heading into the United States by building the wall.
Republicans say that up to $300 million in wall components were left to rust when Biden came to office and that their Finish It Act will use the materials that were left behind or hand the supplies over to states such as Texas to use to shore up their own projects, and critics say that the administration is rushing to sell the leftover materials before the law passes.
The tubes that are being sold are located in an outdoor storage lot in Pima County, Arizona, with a Department of Defense spokesman identifying them as "excess border wall materials."
"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ... has already transferred approximately $154 million worth of the roughly $260 million of bollard panels and other materials," Lt. Col. Devin T. Robinson said, using DOD terminology consigning military surplus materials to commercial resellers or disposing of them.
The sales profits are being put into the Pentagon budget.
Meanwhile, GovPlanet is under instructions to keep the border wall connection to the sales quiet, with a source telling The Daily Upside, the financial publication first reporting the sales: "We are legally not allowed to mention these are the border wall materials, or we could lose our jobs."
Republican lawmakers are slamming the sales.
"This sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame," Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mass, who is sponsoring the bill, told the Post, calling the auctions "outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering."
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a co-sponsor of the bill, agrees, saying that "leaving the border open to terrorists while selling border security materials at a loss is Bidenomics in a nutshell."
The money made from the auctions 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," Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., stated, while Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., called the administration's sales "reckless."
"Our borders continue to be overrun by an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants, turning every district into a border district and compromising our national security," she said.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., who represents the border district where wall components have been sitting, criticized Biden for his "refusal to act."
"Instead of putting these materials to their intended use, they have been squandered, first collecting dust in the desert and now being auctioned off," he said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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