(01-11-2019, 11:19 AM)B2hibry Wrote:

(01-11-2019, 10:43 AM)mikesez Wrote: Um, the $5 billion is a down payment that everyone agrees is insufficient to complete the wall on its own.  The real price is $20-30 billion.  The idea is to pay about $5 billion a year until it is built.  So it's an indefinite time frame.  
And then you asked me to compare this amount to "trillions" that also come from an unspecified time frame.  How many years did you mean?
Let's call that number N.
The annual federal budget is now $4.4 trillion = $4.4e12.  And you have stated that there is waste equal to at least $2e12.
So the waste % is equal to
$2e12 / $4.4e12 * N = 45% / N.  So if you think N is 5 years, then waste is 9%.  But you can pick a different number for N.
Which federal expenditures, amounting to 9% of the annual federal budget, should be cut as waste?

It's not an issue of which one specifically as there is room across the board if you rank our border security as a priority. Trim $5 Billion from International Affairs annually for the next ten years and there is your money. U.N., USAID? Don't like that, how about the General Government, specifically the ever growing Legal, Judicial, and Correctional System? How about the ballooning Economic Security (Public Assistance) pot? Seems that if the immigration system gets streamlined and proper border security implemented, much more than $5 billion annually could perhaps be saved. The fact of the matter is, there really isn't a need to take away from existing programs to fund border security as DHS receives budgetary appropriations every fiscal year. Let them rack and stack the priorities to dollars. In any case, there there is wiggle room in the Federal Budget to rob Peter to pay Paul if necessary. Have you seen all the rediculous grants, programs, bills submitted on a weakly basis that require funding?

Here, you guys can play .gov for a few minutes...
http://usa.v1.abalancingact.com/