All in all are you and I just bricks in Trump’s wall?

You and I can help President Donald Trump honor his biggest campaign promise. On his first day running for officem Trump said, “I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.”

Only it turns out that Mexico … won’t.

So, the president wants American taxpayers to fund his project.

But Congress is having a little trouble with that.

It will cost billions, and that money will have to come from cuts to existing programs. For example, the National Institutes of Health, which provide research grants into illnesses like cancer.

Then there is the half-billion dollars or so that was to have been used for transportation projects and road repair. Housing programs also would be cut. As would grants to low-income college students. It goes on. In addition to that, there are lawsuits. The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity and southern Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva filed a suit in a Tucson federal court to stop the construction of the wall.

Back in 2011, the Republicans in control of the Arizona Legislature thought they had a plan to fund a border wall: donations.

They passed a law creating what they called a Border Security Trust Fund, asking Americans to donate cash to be used to build a wall along Arizona’s border with Mexico.

The sponsor, state Sen. Steve Smith, told me at the time, “I can’t tell you the outpouring of support we have had from all corners of the country. This story has been featured in just about every media outlet in the nation.”

The bill was signed by then-Gov. Jan Brewer. When the fund went national, I was told that donations had come in from every state in the union. Sponsors hoped to collect $50 million.

But … after years and years of “collecting” donations, the advisory committee charged with handling the cash that had come pouring in had enough money on hand — $273,000 — to construct roughly one-tenth of one-mile, maybe, of border wall.

Now, the Trump administration is accepting bids for border-wall designs. Among the suggestions is a giant beaded curtain. Or baseball diamonds every quarter-mile with Fenway-like Green Monster walls. Or a wall made entirely of stovepipe cacti.

It’s going to be really, really, pricey however. Unless…

We do it with volunteers. We organize a variation on the Arizona model, only instead of donations, we ask for Americans to bring building materials and their broad shoulders to the border and build a wall themselves.

It’ll be like it says in the old Pink Floyd song: All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

Or… not.