“1 billion?..what happened to the 12 billion ready for president Trump’s disposal for the wall fund?”
Money is coming from several different accounts, and each will move at its own pace. The breakout for this year is:
$1.375 billion appropriated by Congress
$2.5 billion from DoD counter drug accounts (includes this billion)
$0.6 billion from Treasury asset forfeiture accounts
..and then, only accessible by declaring a National Emergency:
$3.5 billion from Military Construction (MILCON) accounts.
So the total planned for this year is $8 billion.
Congress wanted to know exactly which Military Construction projects the Administration would take the money away from, and the Administration provided a list of about $12 billion that met the criteria, but said they had not yet decided which out of that $12 billion would be the bill payers for the $3.5 billion they will take out of the MILCON total.
So the bottom line is that we are on track to spend a whopping $8 billion on the wall this year - the $12 billion number was not all for the wall.
To put it in perspective, barrier building got $400 million in Fiscal Year 2017, and $1.6 billion in FY 2018. This year will be four times the total of the last two years combined.
We are off to the races for wall building, but it will take a few months for contracting and groundbreaking. In 3-6 months contract awards should be falling like rain.
“$1.375 billion appropriated by Congress”
So, can I quote that amount to you-know-who? I still haven’t written my reply back to him yet.