Steve King’s wall design.
Republican Congressman Steve King has long been an advocate of building a wall along the southern U.S. border.
“You can probably expect to see construction begin in the 2017 construction season,” King says.
That’s because President-elect Donald Trump made building the wall a cornerstone issue in his campaign. King, as you may recall, ran an earth-moving company before he was elected to congress. On Wednesday, King tweeted a picture of what he described as a “simple, efficient and cost-effect” design for the wall.
“(Trump) wants to make it beautiful and I say: ‘Let me build it. I’ll make it work. I’ll make it big. You worry about beautiful,'” King says. “We can have a good wall.”
King says it won’t take the Republican-led congress long to put the wheels in motion, since there’s already money set aside for a wall in some segments of the border. But King says congress will have to plow more money into the project in January.
In 2006, King went on the floor of the U.S. House with a replica of the 12-foot-high border wall he envisioned. This past week, President-elect Trump has suggested he’d agree to a fence rather than a wall in some sections of the nearly 2,000-mile-long border. The federal government has already spent $7 billion erecting fencing along more than 600 miles or about one-third of the border.