Which Military Projects are Affected by Trump Emergency Declaration: Senator Says White House is Deliberately Hiding Information

trump border wall budget request
President Donald Trump is set to ask Congress for an additional $8.6 billion in taxpayer money for his border wall proposal. Getty Images Chip Somodevilla/Staff

With President Donald Trump's veto of a congressional resolution to scuttle emergency funding for the president's promised wall along the border with Mexico, the focus now turns to the question of where the White House will get the funds.

Because congress has not appropriated sufficient money for Trump to erect the wall, the emergency declaration can only take funds from existing military construction projects. However, the White House has not yet specified which projects would see their budgets cut to pay for the wall.

Last week, acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee and declined senators' request for a list of affected military projects.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia was one of the lawmakers to press Shanahan on the issue. Appearing Sunday morning on CBS' Face the Nation, Kaine accused the Trump administration of deliberately holding this information back.

"If you're going to ransack the Pentagon's budget, tell me which projects cut, or delay, or eliminate," said Kaine, quoting an earlier letter he had sent to the Trump administration. "They wouldn't provide an answer."

Sen. @timkaine: White House is withholding information on military projects being cut because they fear losing votes if Congress saw what would “be ransacked to pay for the president's wall.” pic.twitter.com/IZSblBLCt6

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 17, 2019

Kaine noted that at the hearing Shanahan promised to send a list of affected projects, but only after senators voted on the resolution to disapprove of the emergency declaration. Did the Department of Defense ever send that list? No, says the senator from Virginia.

"To add insult to injury, they had to walk that back, they don't even want to give us the list at all," said Kaine, theorizing that the White House doesn't want lawmakers to see the list until after both chambers of congress have taken a vote on possibly overriding Trump's veto.

"This is the White House wanting to hold the list back because they worry that if senators and House members saw the potential projects that were going to be ransacked to pay for the president's wall, they would lose votes," said Kaine. "And I think they're going to try to hide the list until that veto until that veto override vote occurs."

Appearing separately on the same program, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said it "could be a while" until the list of projects is released.

"We've already told congress... none of the programs that were scheduled to be started or what we call obligated in 2019 — so between now and the end of September — will be impacted at all."

Host Margaret Brennan pointed out that Shanahan had told lawmakers that the DOD had the list of projects, but that it just hasn't been handed over.

"I know of no list," claimed Mulvaney, "and if anybody should know it would be me. There's no list that are absolutely not going to be funded so that the wall can be. What it is is a list of programs that fit the criteria that I just laid out for you, which is that they are meant to be funded beyond the end of this fiscal year.

"If it's a project that was going to be funded in 2021, it gives us another couple of years to what we call backfill," he continued. "Congress will pass another appropriation this year, next year, so that ultimately none of the programs would be impacted."

.@MickMulvaneyOMB claims no programs scheduled to start in 2019 will be impacted by emergency declaration, adding: “there's no list of projects that are absolutely going to not be funded...” He added that they fully expect the veto override to fail in the House. pic.twitter.com/vu28I8MXYX

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 17, 2019

While it appears that neither the Democratic-controlled House nor the GOP-controlled Senate have the sufficient two-thirds vote to override the president's veto, a number of Republicans in both chambers did cast votes opposing Trump's emergency declaration.

Many of the Republicans who voted in favor of the resolution pointed to concerns about the impact it would have on constitutionally mandated separation of powers, possibly establishing a precedent whereby a president could fund any unpopular project by declaring an emergency. However, others, including Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, raised questions about the White House pulling much-needed funding from military projects to pay for a border wall that could be funded through other means.

GettyImages-1136038278
President Donald Trump speaks during an event on border security in the Oval Office of the White House on March 15 in Washington, D.C. Alex Wong/Getty Images

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