Congress demands accounting for border wall waste
H.R. 326 — Border Wall Waste Accountability Act · Filed by Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) · 7 cosponsors · Introduced Jan 9, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill requires the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study and report to Congress within 90 days on how much money was spent on construction materials for the border wall that ended up unused between January 2021 and January 2025. It is a transparency measure designed to account for taxpayer spending on the border wall project.
Why we flagged it
The bill is a straightforward transparency and oversight mechanism requiring a factual audit of federal spending. It does not appropriate funds, regulate conduct, or create new policy — it mandates disclosure of existing information to Congress and the public.
What the text implies
- The study's scope is limited to materials obtained but unused; it does not address whether materials that were used represented efficient spending or whether the wall project itself was cost-effective.
- The 90-day deadline is tight for a comprehensive audit of a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar project; the GAO may be constrained in depth of analysis.
- The bill does not mandate any remedial action or recovery of funds, so the study may be informational only without enforcement consequences.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Citizens benefit from transparency into how federal funds were spent on a major infrastructure project. The bill creates a public accounting of potential waste without restricting anyone's rights or imposing new costs; it simply requires disclosure of facts already in government records.
Named in the bill
Government Accountability Office (GAO), Comptroller General of the United States, U.S. Congress, Department of Homeland Security (implied)
Where it stands
7 cosponsors: 7 Republicans.
- Jan 9, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Jan 9, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Homeland Security · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (496 characters) on Sep 27, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 15,316 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
As of — page rendered 2026-09-27.
“Congress demands accounting for border wall waste” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr326 Report an error