Biden administration is circulating proposals to publicly dispute the $320 million dollar cost figure for the failed Gaza aid pier as a way of making it appear less of a disaster.
State Department officials in particular are discussing revising the cost downward to as little as $80 million or so, a Department official told me. The ridiculous proposition offered to stem the criticism of the pier would dispute the Pentagon’s most recent estimate, which is almost double what it originally estimated.
That the government seeks to change the narrative says a lot about the Biden camp’s priorities, but it should also be a reminder: If the Pentagon builds it, it will often cost double, triple, or ten times the original estimate, a truth that is plain to any thinking American.
Consider some facts: the administration originally estimated the Gaza aid pier to cost $180 million, which is almost half of its current estimated price tag of $320 million. Only after pressure from Congress did the Pentagon, which constructed and oversees the pier, update its original estimate.
“The cost has not just risen,” Senator Roger Wicker of the Armed Services Committee said a month into the project. “It has exploded.”
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