View from the North 40: Where's wall dough?

The other day I was presented this mind-bending analogy by someone attempting to put the government shutdown and border wall into perspective:

“Trump is asking for $5.7 billion out of an annual budget of $4.407 trillion … In other words, Trump is asking for $57 out of an annual budget of $44,070.”

You see what the author of this tidbit did there? Yeah, removed all those pesky “illion” endings and zeros they represent to put the numbers in amounts the average intellect can understand.

Since I am nothing short of an average intellect, I did the math — the kind of math that uses big numbers, percentages and words like median, per capita, estimates, forecasts and demographics — the kind of math no liberal arts major should try on their own. But I did.

Brace yourselves.

Of course $57 out of a $44,070 budget ain’t much, but it’s also just an analogy. Right? I wanted a true reflection of what $5.7 billion means to us in real money.

As it turns out, with an estimated 2019 population of 328.2 million citizens in the U.S., the wall would only literally cost each U.S. citizen $17.36. Not bad, right?

Paying this would, of course, put undue pressure on, y’know, homeless people, the elderly in care centers, and babies, who would all have trouble scraping together that cash. Babies especially are notorious for making other people pay for stuff, so I took the liberty of factoring out youth under 16 (20 percent of the population), those people living in poverty (12 percent) and the oldest one-third of the elderly (5 percent). That gives us 203.5 million citizens paying $28 each.

Still not too bad.

Except, I already pay taxes. I don’t want to donate another $28 for one project, which has yet to be fully studied. If I were going to do that I would pay $28 toward the $123 billion needed to help to rehabilitate the 54,259 bridges across the U.S. that are rated “structurally deficient,” which is from an actual study.

Or I would buy a new pair of jeans to ensure I stay adequately clothed — because keeping my body fully covered in public is the main thing I do to help keep America beautiful. You’re welcome.

Besides, the congressional and presidential branches of government have become horrible money managers. We’re talking about the U.S. being $22 trillion in debt (the official number hasn’t been calculated for the end of 2018 because the people who do that are furloughed).

About 30 percent of that debt is owned by foreign countries, starting with China ($1.1T) and Japan ($1T).

I think the average U.S. citizen is on the hook for quite a lot of debt. So how does this wall of contention get funded?

My proposal is this:

We garnish wages on Capitol Hill for the time that the government is shut down. Right now that gives us about $6,342,240 (House) + $1,421,000 (Senate) + $ 19,417 (VP) + $ 33,333 (president) = about $7.816 million.

Next, we demand payback of other wasted funds.

Trump will be required to refund excessive travel costs incurred during his time in office so far. In his first year in office Trump made 29 personal flights (to go golfing) and 21 political party flights (mostly to attend rallies for himself) on Air Force One.

In the 2018 mid-term election year, the president figured out he could golf a half-hour away in Virginia (and get a whole stretch of the Potomac River shut down just for him in the process — who’s the big man, now, George Washington), so Trump only made eight personal flights, but bumped up to 62 flights to campaign for others. Two-year total = 112.

As a yardstick for “normal” usage of Air Force One, the previous president made 28 trips in an equivalent time frame: nine total personal or political party flights his first year in office, and 19 during the 2016 election year campaigning for others.

We can surmise from a Government Accountability Office analysis of a 2013 flight that Air Force One likely costs an average $3.6 million per trip, therefore 112 (excess) — 28(“norm”) = 84 (excessive trips). Multiply 84 x $3.6 million = $302.4 million dollars spent on excessive travel for personal or political party purposes to be refunded.

Now add the $7.816 million in Capitol Hill fines and we get about $310.2 million for the wall, which is still sadly short of the $5.7 billion asked for — because the ask is in billions, not 57 dollar bills.

$5.7B - $310.2M = $5.39B shortfall.

Welcome to the final, fat-capitalist solution for securing all the funding for the wall: Corporate sponsorship. The big, beautiful, shiny wall that will keep all the illegal drugs out can be paid for by the pharmaceutical companies, which will profit the most by taking over the drug cartels’ regions with sales of legal drugs.

They already pay close to $2 billion a year in fines, and who knows how much in advertising. Just think of the new advertising opportunities where the wall goes through cities like San Diego, El Paso, Nogales and Yuma. What about the visual impact of signage in scenic tourist focal points like Big Bend National Park, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument? Priceless.

Or about $5.39 billion the first year, and price negotiable after that.

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In a world where a $5,700,000,000 wall separates two countries from coast to coast, the owner of a $500 rowboat is king and the guy with a $5 shovel is the mayor of tunnel town at [email protected].