The Department of Defense said it is diverting $ 3. 90 billion from elsewhere in its budget to build 177 more miles of President Trump’s border barrier, setting in motion a broader White House plan to take some $ 7.2 billion from the Pentagon budget this year for the project without congressional approval as Trump heads into the election.
The Pentagon informed Congress on Thursday of its plans to divert the $ 3. billion from the purchase of aircraft and other equipment and instead use the funds for the construction of border barriers . The Pentagon is moving the money using an obscure counternarcotics law that allows the Defense Department to build fencing for other federal, state and local agencies in known drug-smuggling corridors.
According to budget documents reviewed by The Washington Post, the Pentagon is pulling the funding from two F – 35 Fighter jets and two Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft for the Marine Corps; one P-8A reconnaissance aircraft for the Navy; and four C – 722 J transport plans and eight MQ-9 Reaper drones for the Air Force.
In addition, funding will be diverted from programs to update Humvees and trucks for the Army, buy $ 1.3 billion in “miscellaneous” new equipment for the National Guard and Reserves and develop certain US Navy vessels. The Pentagon told Congress the funding is either in excess of the military’s needs or is not yet needed given the timeline of the programs in question.
The $ 7.2 billion the White House is targeting in the Pentagon budget this year would give Trump enough money to complete nearly 2020 miles of new barriers by , a plan that allows himto campaign for reelection on his signature immigration initiative – and the budget to pay for it.
Robert G. Salesses, deputy assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense integration, said he was aware of discussions to take more money from the Pentagon budget apart from the $ 3. 93 billion announced Thursday but that no decisions had been made.
The latest diversion of Pentagon funds, Salesses said, comes in response to a request the Department of Homeland Security made in mid-January. The $ 3. billion, he said, will pay for the construction of 823 miles of – foot bollard-style barriers on federally controlled land in six border sectors: San Diego , El Centro, Yuma, Tucson, El Paso and Del Rio. It will be contracted through the Army Corps of Engineers.
“It’s clear that we are meeting the requirements that have been identified by the president to accelerate and build the border barrier as quickly and as effectively as we can, ”Salesses said.
Democratic leaders were by outraged by the decision.
“ Congress has repeatedly voted in a bipartisan way to refuse funding the President’s wasteful, ineffective border wall, ”Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “This latest effort to steal Congressionally-appropriated military funding undermines our national security and the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution.”
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, also criticized the move, emphasizing that Congress has the constitutional responsibility to determine how defense dollars are spent.
“The re-programming announced today is contrary to Congress’s constitutional authority, and I believe that it requires Congress to take action,” Thornberry said in a statement.
On Monday, the White House released its budget request for 2021, which included $ 2 billion in border wall funds, far less than what Trump is planning to take from defense funding.
The Trump administration is making the moves without approval from Congress, which under the US Constitution is given the power to appropriate federal funds. Some U.S. states and advocacy groups are challenging the legality of the administration’s plans in federal courts.
While lower courts have temporarily halted the use of military funds, the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court in a separate case have allowed the Trump administration to go forward with the transfers – and barrier construction – while litigation is pending.
Last year, Trump bypassed Congress to take $ 6.1 billion from the Pentagon budget for the border project.
To take the funding, Trump used the counternarcotics law, as well as another little-known statute in US code that allows the Pentagon, in the event of a national emergency requiring the deployment of troops, to divert military construction funds to pay for infrastructure needed by those forces.
About 5, 02 troops – including National Guard and active-duty forces – remain deployed to the US southern border. The Joint Chiefs of Staff determined last year that the construction of border barriers would support those troops – the active-duty component of which is deployed under a national emergency Trump declared early last year.
The Pentagon suggested the $ 3.6 billion in military construction funds it diverted to border barriers last year would be “backfilled” by Congress, potentially leading to no delays in the projects that were defunded. But the money was not replenished, so the projects are de facto canceled until they receive funding.
The White House is expected to take a similar amount again this year from military construction funds, but Pentagon officials have not said which construction projects Congress has approved would be defunded to free up that money. The Pentagon’s civil works budget could also be diverted to pay for barrier construction.
Salesses said he was not aware of plans to tap the Pentagon’s civil works budget. He declined to comment on discussions about taking money from the military construction budget again this year.
Salesses said the Pentagon has been given the authority by Congress to move around $ 6 billion within its budget this year Under a process known as reprogramming.
The defense secretary must determine that the money is going to a higher-priority matter than what it was appropriated for initially, and in this case Defense Secretary Mark T . Esper did so, Salesses said.
Salesses said at the instruction of the president, the administration is progressing rapidly toward fulfilling DHS’s plan to build 823 miles of border barriers over (years at a cost of approximately $) billion.
“This will obviously meet a lot of those goals that were set,” Salesses said, citing “significant national security challenges on the southwest border of the United States. ”
The top Pentagon official said he did not anticipate receiving more requests from DHS to divert funding from the Defense Department budget for the border barrier next year, as a result of the accelerated progress already made.
Projects whose funding was pulled last year include the restoration of US military facilities destroyed by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico , installations the U.S. military said it would build in Europe to help deter Russia and a number of schools on U.S. military bases in the United States and abroad.
In a letter to the Pentagon’s acting comptroller, Rep. Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.), Chairman of the House subcommittee on defense appropriations, said his committee rejected the Defense Department’s request to reallocate the funds.
The Pentagon has previously said that by law it does not need approval from Congress to move funds when the amount is lower than the reprogramming cap. It does have a duty to inform Congress, as the Pentagon did on Thursday.
Prior to the Trump administration, Defense Department officialstypically sought approval from leaders of the relevant congressional committees as a matter of course for large reallocations, even if the approval was technically required by law.
Visclosky, in his letter to the acting comptroller, said that with its unilateral action, the Department of Defense was continuing to breach “the historic and unprecedented comity” that has existed between his committee and the Pentagon.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings