The Department of Homeland Security Reports that it has nothing to show for spending 1.3 Billion during the last five years to build a fence to keep out illegal aliens, the fence along our border with Mexico doesn’t exist and the money is gone.
Mark Borkowski, executive director of DHS’s Secure Border Initiative, told a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight that the department will likely scale back its plans to install sensors, cameras and radar towers along the Southwest border.
Borkowski’s admission came after withering testimony from Randolph Hite of the Government Accountability Office on the state of the virtual fence program, known as SBInet.
Hite said SBInet has been troubled since its outset and plagued by frequently changing milestones, management weaknesses and performance shortfalls. As a result, he said, the Department has little to show after spending most of the program’s $1.3 billion budget.
“In effect DHS is saying it will have to invest more than a billion dollars into SBInet before it will know whether doing so was economically justified or cost effect vis-à-vis other technology alternatives,” Hite said.
Apparently, management weakness is an excuse to waste or abscond with 1.3 Billion dollars, in private industry people would be fired and prosecuted; our government seems to think we should give them another billion dollars to see if they can manage the money more efficiently.
How convenient, Chris Carney, (D-PA) makes a show of reprimanding the DHS and then stresses the point that the fence may not be effective; reiterating the views of the Administration.
Subcommittee chairman Chris Carney, (D-Pa.) blasted DHS for the lack of progress and high cost of the program, which he called unacceptable.
“At our last hearing on SBInet in March I asked if we could get a refund and I believe the taxpayers would still like one,” Carney said.
“Now perhaps some good has come from this program, but not nearly enough to justify the funding and time that has been spent on this program, and I urge the department to continue to explore alternative means to secure the border in a timely and effective manner.”
All is forgiven, now get together and figure out a plan that does nothing and that costs less.
Hite said DHS couldn’t provide positive answers to basic questions such as “Are we doing the right thing?” and “Are we doing it the right way?”
“The answers right now are: ‘we don’t know’ and ‘no, we’re not’,” Hite said. “After having invested almost a billion dollars in five years, the answers should be ‘yes.'”
Borkowski agreed DHS has failed to deliver on the program’s original goals, which is why his office is focusing on completing two portions of the system along the Arizona border near Tucson and Ajo.
Once those two are complete, DHS will assess the viability and cost effectiveness of SBInet in comparison with other technology alternatives. Borkowski admitted it is unlikely SBInet technology will be deployed along the entire border.
Republican lawmakers complained that Secretary of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has already promised an assessment of the program but has yet to deliver.
In reality, this has merely been a method by the White House to keep from building the dreaded fence that might be effective in slowing the illegal alien invasion. This White House and the previous White House are not in favor of the fence nor in slowing the invasion. In the mean time, they will waste or steal all public money that is invested in the project to disillusion and dishearten the American the American people with their wastefulness and disregard of our tax money. Just as the DoJ promises not to prosecute illegal aliens from Arizona, the DHS is promising to waste all money scheduled for the fence. Our government is no longer representing the people, it has a private agenda that we are supposed to accept with blind faith, this is not exactly the way our Constitution laid it all out.
A professional horseman for over 50 years, Skook continues to work with horses. Skook has finished an historical novel, Fifty Thousand Years, that traces a mitochondrial line of DNA from 50,000 years ago to the present. The story follows a line of courageous women, from the Ice Ages to the present, as they meet the challenges of survival with grit and creativity. These are not women who whimper of being victims, they meet the challenges of survival as women who use their abilities without excuses or remorse, these women are winners, they are our ancestors.
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