quote:

Trump announced Feb. 15 that, using emergency powers, he wants to divert as much as $6.7 billion from other programs to finance the construction of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. That includes $3.6 billion from unspent military construction money, $2.5 billion in unspent Pentagon counterdrug funds and $600 million from a Treasury Department asset forfeiture account.

But the Defense Department has told lawmakers that only $85 million remains unspent in the counterdrug account, a House Appropriations spokesman said Thursday.

The Pentagon is planning to ask Congress for authority to reprogram more than $2.4 billion from other military programs into the counterdrug account in order to then take it right back out and move it to the wall project.

“The Department would need to reprogram additional funding into the account to reach the up to $2.5 billion that may be required for border security support,” said Christopher Sherwood, a Defense Department spokesman.

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If President Donald Trump uses emergency powers to tap the military’s construction budget to bankroll a border wall, it would contradict his administration’s previous statements that the so-called milcon programs need more money, not less.

While the president signed into law last September legislation that allocated about $8.1 billion for military construction projects in fiscal 2019, that figure was nearly $800 million less than Trump proposed. And it was almost $1.5 billion less than the military services had wanted at that time.

Last June, when Congress debated scaled-back military construction spending, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told lawmakers the military construction spending request for fiscal 2019 had been carefully assembled to meet important military objectives. Reductions, he said, were not warranted. Mulvaney now also serves as acting White House chief of staff.