The Pentagon may be planning to tap into $1 billion in leftover funds from military pay and pension accounts to help Trump cover the costs for his controversial border wall.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin told the Associated Press, “It’s coming out of military pay and pensions. $1 billion. That’s the plan.”
Durbin alleged the funds are available because Army recruitment is down and a voluntary early military retirement program is actually being underutilized.
Durbin, who is the top Democrat on the Appropriations panel for the Pentagon, was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who met with Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Thursday morning.
The development comes as a proposal from Pentagon officials who are seeking to minimize the amount of wall money that would come from military construction projects that are already so cherished by many lawmakers.
The Pentagon’s plan is to transfer money from various accounts into a fund dedicated to drug interdiction, with the money then slated to be redirected for the wall.
More attention has been paid to Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to tap up to $3.6 billion from military construction projects to pay for the wall.
The Democratic-controlled House voted last month to reject Trump’s move, and the GOP-held Senate is likely to follow suit next week despite a White House lobbying push.
Senators have grown increasingly uneasy ahead of voting next week because they don’t know exactly where the money to build the wall will come from and if it will postpone military projects in their home states.
Vice President Mike Pence told senators during their meeting a week ago that he would get back to them with an update regarding their concerns. But senators said they have yet to receive a response from the administration.
Senate Republicans met again Wednesday to sort through their options in hopes of making next week’s voting more politically palatable, but they’re struggling to come up with an alternative to simply voting up or down on the House measure as required under a never-used Senate procedure to reject a presidential emergency declaration.
The fact is, lawmakers on both sides believe Trump is inappropriately infringing on Congress’ power of the purse.
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