The Return of The Wall
Terry H. Schwadron
Jan. 22, 2020
Once again, Donald Trump is planning to take billions of dollars for military base construction and counter-narcotics funds to invest them in extending The Wall.
According to internal budget documents obtained by The Washington Post, Trump is preparing to divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funding for border wall construction this year, five times what Congress authorized him to spend on the project in the 2020 budget.
That plan follows the same sort of internal transfer in this fiscal year. Democrats had approved $1.4 billion for this year to replace border barriers already in place, but Trump went ahead and took $3.6 billion from construction projects to build schools and services on bases to spend on Wall matters.
This time, though, the move is drawing grumbling from senior Republicans as well as Democrats. The money is more — $3.7 billion — or a total of $18 billion in the Trump years.
Of course, all this is pretty far from those rally cries promising that Mexico would pay for the Wall. Still, Trump has struggled to convince Congress that the project is necessary and useful.
I find it of particular interest right now because the plan to substitute Trump’s values for Congress’ votes is at the heart of the issues before the impeachment trial. A Government Accounting Office review of the withholding of Ukraine military aid was adjudged this week as being “illegal” exactly for those reasons.
Of course, I also see the Wall more as a presidential obsession than a truly effective obstacle to illegal smuggling and immigration.
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According to the plans, which come as another migrant march is heading out of Guatemala, the funding would give the government enough money to complete about 885 miles of new fencing by spring 2022, rather than 509 miles the administration has slated for the border with Mexico. Actually, most of the new migrants are being stopped by Mexican authorities under new arrangements with the U.S.
To date, the construction has all been on land that the federal government already knows, and nearly all of it has been replacement work for fencing rather than new construction. Doing so will require taking private land — something that surely will spawn court challenges.
There are other court cases for the wall: A federal district court in El Paso ruled last month that the White House broke the law by diverting funds for the border wall that had been authorized by Congress for another purpose. The court froze the $3.6 billion. But then an appeals court said the work could proceed.
Perhaps that ruling encouraged White House staff to try it again this year.
And, in the field, there have been embarrassing episodes of people sawing through the bars of new construction.
Ill Congressional reaction is bipartisan: “I wish they’d get the money somewhere else, instead of defense,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby, R-AL, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “But I do support building the wall.”
“I think it’s outrageous,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, the top Democrat on the armed services committee, who called it “a slap to the military as well as a slap to Congress” and “another example of Congress sitting down and trying to direct resources that are of critical need to the Department of Defense, and then having those needs disregarded by the president for a project that is more political than necessary for national security.”
“I’m not in favor of diversions of budgets that were appropriated for specific purposes, and I’d rather see specific appropriations for the wall,” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-UT, said.
Lawmakers appropriated $1.05 billion for drug interdiction and counterdrug activities in the 2020 fiscal year, far less than the $3.5 billion the White House is seeking to divert from those programs this year. That means the Pentagon would have to find money elsewhere in its budget for the remaining $2.45 billion.
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Trump administration officials repeatedly have tried to play down the impact of the financial maneuvering on military assets and operations, depicting the move as an act of creative accounting.
Several dozen Pentagon construction projects were delayed or suspended as a result of last year’s reprogramming, including road repairs, a waste treatment plant and school construction projects on military bases. It’s unclear if those projects will be delayed again, or if a different set of repairs and improvements could be postponed.
Congress authorized nearly $700 billion in defense spending for 2020, a slight increase over last year’s levels, but $1 billion for Wall construction.
Homeland security officials repeatedly have been put in the position of defending a dwindling amount of actual Wall construction even as Trump uses the Wall as a campaign prop. Chad F. Wolf, acting homeland security secretary, said the administration renewed promises for 400 to 450 miles that are either completed or under construction by the end of 2020.
You wonder why we even have Congressional votes on the budget if the regal authority in the White House is going to throw it all out to underwrite those projects like the Wall that Trump feels can help him win reelection.
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