Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Tuesday that the border can be secured for $75 billion less than House Republicans proposed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, The Hill reported.
Paul is one of several Senate Republicans on the hunt for more cuts to the megabill, the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s agenda, tackling tax cuts, funding for defense and border security, passed by the House, and he plans on proposing changes to the $150 billion earmarked by House Republicans for the border.
“The wall, if you look at the [Customs and Border Protection] website — until they removed it yesterday — they said it would cost $6.5 million per mile” to build the border wall, Paul told reporters.
“If you add that up for about 1,000 miles that’s $6.5 billion. They asked for $46.5 billion, so they got a math problem,” he said, according to the report.
“Where is that extra $40 billion going?” Paul asked in a post to X on Monday.
In another, he wrote, “We can cut the proposed border funding in half, from $150 billion to $75 billion, and still secure our border and protect the American people.”
Paul is one of several Senate Republicans who said they would not vote for the bill as passed by the House. Paul’s biggest hurdle is the debt ceiling, which Trump wants to raise.
“I would vote for it, for most bills perfect or imperfect, that don’t include the debt ceiling. All I’ve said is, strip off the debt ceiling,” he told Newsmax last week. “I don’t vote for the spending. I want less spending. I want less debt. And I’m not going to vote to expand at $5 trillion.”
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