With his declaration of a national emergency on the US Southern Border?
Donald Trump is getting ready to steal money Congress designated for Defense projects around the country ….
This is sure to make the lawmakers that did NOT vote as the larceny have to explain to their constituents why projects for them have been abandoned ….
This is remarkable…
Republicans are actually screwing themselves with their home districts to let Donald Trump build a wall he can call his own built with taxpayers money that Congress couldn’t or wouldn’t stop….
Maybe there will be a Trump Hotel thrown for good measure?
For weeks, lawmakers had asked the Department of Defense for a list of projects that could be canceled or delayed, but the Pentagon did not provide the list to Reed’s office until Monday — after the Senate already voted and Trump issued his veto.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled an attempt to override Trump’s veto on March 26, when members return from a weeklong recess. She will need nearly 60 GOP votes to overturn the veto. That number seemed impossible previously, and it is unclear how many more Republicans will vote against Trump once they see that projects in their own states or districts could be affected.
“What President Trump is doing is a slap in the face to our military that makes our border and the country less secure,” Reed said. “He is planning to take funds from real, effective operational priorities and needed projects and divert them to his vanity wall. That may help shore up his political base, but it could come at the expense of our military bases and the men and women of our armed forces who rely on them.”
It is unclear from the Pentagon’s memo, though, exactly which projects would be affected. In a one-page fact sheet, the department states that only projects whose construction contracts are scheduled to be awarded after Sept. 30 will be considered, which greatly narrows down the total list. A large number of projects have contract award dates before Sept. 30, which presumably means they would be safe.
Further, an award date after Sept. 30 does not necessarily mean that a project would be affected, only that it is in the pool to be considered for delay or cancellation. Trump’s emergency declaration authorized $3.6 billion to be transferred from military construction projects, but DOD officials have said the actual amount would depend on how much the Department of Homeland Security said it needs. And as of Monday, the DHS has not submitted such a list — more than a month after the emergency declaration.
Trump’s proposed 2020 budget asks Congress for an additional $8.6 billion, which would be enough to “finish” the wall,….