The Government Accountability Office is reportedly investigating President Biden’s freeze on border wall funding, which may have broken the law by freezing funds that budget rules dictate should be in control of Congress.
“The Biden administration has to be really careful about doing stuff like this because, otherwise, they’re just going to be doing the exact thing the Trump administration did — just at the other end of the policy spectrum,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.
Biden made the move to freeze the funding on his first day in office, a move Republicans have said “directly contributed” to the crisis at the border. A group of over 70 Republicans has now asked the GAO to weigh in on the matter, which the watchdog organization usually does at the request of a member of Congress.
Sen. Roy Blunt said Biden has no excuse for freezing the funds, noting that the president served in Congress for over three decades.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SPENDS MILLIONS PER DAY TO HALT BORDER WALL CONSTRUCTION
“He was in the Congress a long time,” Blunt said. “He knows it’s the Congress’s job to authorize how the money is spent and the president’s job to spend it efficiently.”
Republicans are hoping that an unfavorable GAO opinion for Biden would bolster their argument that his administration is responsible for the influx of people at the border.
The Biden administration has argued that the freeze was “a necessary and responsible step for prudent management of federal funds,” citing lawsuits against the construction of the barrier.
Administration officials have also pointed to the fact that the freeze was made by a presidential proclamation, a step not taken by former President Donald Trump when the GAO ruled that he illegally withheld military aid from Ukraine in 2019.
But Hedtler-Gaudette argued that the freeze was not Biden’s call to make.
“A lot of us agree that the border wall was a very stupid idea, a waste of money, but Congress decided to waste the money on that,” Hedtler-Gaudette said. “The way to address that is not to have the executive branch override the legislative branch.”
The GOP senators who asked the GAO to review the freeze said that “billions in lawfully appropriated dollars … sit unused by the Biden administration,” which violates a 1974 law against presidents curbing funds already allocated by Congress.
The halt to barrier construction is still costing the government $6 million per day as contractors are paid for cost of ownership and rental expenses while their projects sit idle, according to a senior Department of Homeland Security official.
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That 60-day pause has now expired, but the administration still hasn’t decided what to do with the funds despite the deadline and the prospects of the GAO investigation looming.
The administration said it still plans to spend the funds, though it’s possible that the agencies responsible could use the money on wall-related expenses, such as repairs, as opposed to continuing new construction.
