One of the promises of the 2009 stimulus bill was that the government would start work on a large number of “shovel-ready” projects that would generate jobs. Probably the greatest disappointment with the bill is that most of the purported shovel-ready projects got tied up in the regulatory process and never generated any jobs. Since the border wall has been on the books since the 1980s you have to think that the regulatory process is complete. If the 2009 stimulus bill was screaming for any shovel-ready project that could generate jobs, why didn’t we build the wall?