President Trump is asking for $5.7 billion to fund the construction of our border wall. In 2018, the feds spent a stunning $4.173 trillion. The border wall would amount to just 1/10th of 1 percent of current annual federal spending. The Democrat Party is scared to death that if Trump is able to fulfill his promise and build the wall, there is no way they’ll be able to beat him in 2020. There’s no chance the free-spending Democrats, who typically can’t spend our money fast enough, are suddenly concerned about fiscal responsibility.

The 2018 Prime Cuts report, by the watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste, reveals some areas where taxpayer dollars are being wasted, that could instead, be used for the construction of a wall on our southern border. According to the watchdog group, the Prime Cuts 2018 version contains 636 recommendations that would save taxpayers $429.8 billion in the first year and $3.1 trillion over five years.

Grabien News compiled a list of a number of individual programs the watchdog group recommends cutting, that in and of themselves, exceed the $5.7 billion President Trump is asking the Democrat Party to give him to build the wall on our southern border.

Here are the top five programs that could each pay for the construction of the wall if they were defunded by our government:

“Rural Utility Service.” This program costs taxpayers $8.2 billion/year and has no actual purpose after its original intent — bringing electricity to rural communities — was long ago achieved.

Eliminating sugar subsidies alone would save $6 billion, enough to fund the border wall; it would also have the added benefit of helping curb the nation’s obesity epidemic.

Community Development Grants. These grants were created in the 70s to revitalize failing American cities. The program has almost always been plagued with dysfunction, with grants going to wealthy communities and other recipients failing to produce accountability or results. Citizens Against Government Waste reports that even President Obama called for reining in the program. Its elimination would save $15 billion over 5 years.

The United Nations. As the United Nation’s largest contributor, the U.S. in 2016 donated $10 billion to the U.N. As CAGW notes, reducing these contributions just 25 percent would create a savings of $12.5 billion over 10 years. Of the money Congress appropriates for the United Nations, $5 million taxpayer dollars are itemized for abortions in foreign countries.

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse. The Government Accountability Office estimates taxpayers are spending more than $137 billion annually on “payment errors,” which covers all manner of waste, fraud, and abuse within Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The feds could implement the same kind of fraud protections credit card companies used to ensure against abuse but don’t. In fact, Congress has gone in the opposite direction, winding down the program intended to police fraud within Medicare, the so-called Recovery Audit Contractor. In other words, Congress is knowingly funding tens of billions of dollars of fraud annually.

These insanely wasteful programs couldn’t pay for the wall by themselves, but collectively, they sure could make a dent. Even if we take the wall out of the equation, you have to wonder who, in our government, gave the okay for these programs to be funded with our taxpayer dollars in the first place?

• The feds spent $613,634 to boost “intimacy and trust” of transgender women and their male partners (The Washington Free Beacon)
• The feds spent $5 million paying hipsters to stop smoking and then blog about it (as well as use cool anti-smoking swag — like beer koozies). (Readers Digest)
• Northwestern University has received more than $3 million in National Institutes of Health to watch hamster fights. “Some of those experiments involved injecting hamsters with steroids, then putting another hamster in the cage to see if the drugged rodents were more aggressive when protecting their territory. This program has since been halted following protests from animal rights activists,” Readers Digest reports.
• The feds spend $1,009,762 training “social justice” math teachers (The Washington Free Beacon)
• “The government spent at least $518,000 in federal grants to study how cocaine affects the sexual behavior of Japanese quails,” Readers Digest reports.
• The Federal Register is legally required to be printed daily and distributed to Congressional offices despite most never being read and all of the information is available online. Stopping this unnecessary printing would save $1 million a year.