Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from the state of Wisconsin, witnessed the amendment that he designed for the bipartisan infrastructure bill get smacked down on Wednesday, however, he took some time to speak to Newsmax where he revealed that his border wall measure wouldn’t have cost anything and would’ve actually saved the federal government a healthy chunk of change.
Which, of course, the left doesn’t want to happen, because it’s a lot harder to collapse a free-market system of government if you can’t spend money into oblivion.
Johnson’s amendment would have prohibited ending any contracts for border barriers or security measures that already have funds obligated — language with a clear eye toward the wall that splintered lawmakers throughout Donald Trump’s presidency. Construction was ended with a stroke of President Joe Biden’s pen on Jan. 20.
Appearing Thursday on “Spicer & Co.,” Johnson said his amendment made no attempt to spend more federal money. On the contrary, he said, when his fellow senators voted his amendment down, “they were just denying us finishing building a wall that’s already been bought and paid for.”
The Wednesday vote on the amendment defeated one of the few controversial proposed changes to the bill, keeping the broader legislation on track for a vote as soon as this weekend. It was blocked in a 49-48 vote, well short of the 60 votes needed for inclusion.
Johnson went on to cite information from a report that was done by Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, stating that it has cost the federal government close to $2 billion to terminate the federal contracts, along with an additional $3 million per day just to guard the construction supplies that have already been bought for the project.
“All Johnson’s amendment would have done, he said, would have made it impossible to terminate the contracts so that the wall would have to be built that has already been paid for, and it asked for no new appropriations,” Newsmax said.
“This used to be a nonpartisan, a bipartisan issue,” he went on to say. “Back in 2006, the Senate passed the Secure Fence Act by a vote of 80 to 19. [Then Sen.] Biden voted for it. Chuck Schumer voted for it. But now all of a sudden securing the border is a completely partisan issue.”
The GOP has placed the blame square on the shoulder’s of President Joe Biden and his decision to immediately reverse all of the Trump administration’s border policies for the spike we’re seeing in illegal migrants flowing across the border.
Johnson then told the hosts of the program that Vice President Kamala Harris, who went to Central America to check out where all of this foot traffic is coming from, didn’t have to travel that far to find the source.
“All she had to do is really walk into the Oval Office and look right at the root cause, which is President Biden,” he added.
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