How is this legal? The republicans would be screaming bloody murder if a democrat moved 1 BILLION dollars from the Pentagon.
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Great. It sets the precedent for a Democrat to move $ billions from Pentagon budget into an actual Emergency like Climate Change.
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Holler, scream, stamp our feet, this is the pivot. It is going to be one hell of a ride. I hope we survive.
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This clear violation of the Constitution is the biggest danger to our continuing as a functioning democratic republic.
If the President now controls the pursestrings, there is nothing stopping him.
Republicans are doing more damage to our country than our worst enemies have ever dreamed of accomplishing.
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I was just abut to say that the Pentagon has now become a piggy bank. Hope the next Dem POTUS uses it wisely.
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More fencing for people to steal?
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Oh honest to CHRIST! Isn’t it ‘funny’ that the Cons don’t care HALF as much about the ‘broken promises’ on healthcare, SS and Medicare but they whined and sniveled and gnashed their teeth for WEEKS over this fking wall…and now ONE BILLION DOLLARS appropriated for something else is going to fund the vanity wall. Disgust doesn’t begin to describe it.
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Its not even funding a wall, its funding a fence, though he likely will call it a wall.
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In October Trump screeched about the invading caravan - sent troops to the border to patrol and bolster the border - and string barbed wire on the border. After the election, silence about the impending doom for a month. Then he starts a 2 month long tantrum which eventually leads to his Emergency Declaration - legislation overriding it, and a veto of that.
Meanwhile in the week before the Pentagon notifies Congress about this spending, a story breaks from San Diego - that in just the few months from the time troops were sent to the border at the earlier Trump tantrum -swaths of the barbed wire had been stolen and was being used by homeowners in Tijuana to protect their homes. I am pretty sure that Trump doesn’t know about this as I doubt that Fox has uttered a word on the air, and Trump doesn’t read or listen to briefings.
What a hot mess and waste of money. Perhaps this folly soothes (for 30 seconds) the sagging ego of the tantrum-in-chief, but it also dangerously sets new precedents.
It also gives material for a hilarious short bit by Trevor Noah:
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Good quote from the Appropriation Committee Dems’ letter to DHS - “The $1 billion reprogramming that the Department is implementing without congressional approval constitutes a dollar-for-dollar theft from other readiness needs of our Armed Forces." Emphasis mine.
Which schools for the children of service members, hangers for planes, training facilities, maintenance facilities, base security upgrades will be cut to fund this fiasco? Hammer every R who isn’t fighting against this weakening of national security.
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“a wall, or a border, or some kind of barrier…” He’s been rifting on this for a couple of months now.
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If I believed in an afterlife I’d say Osama bin Laden is laughing somewhere. America will destroy itself: all he had to do was light the fuse.
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Couldn’t agree more. Putin is in hysterics here on Earth.
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I hope the money comes from projects in red states and cause economic hardship for the redneck, hillybilly, inbred, troglodytes who voted for this man.
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I wonder how they’re going to explain this to Congress when they go asking for an extra $9 BILLION to pay for climate-related repairs to their bases in the Carolinas and Florida (which was hit not just by a hurricane, but by a tornado as well)? “But he made me do it?”
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…or else it’s a theft from the black hole of military appropriations. A hole that needs to be plugged and the admission by the military that they can spare $1B will help when the Dems finally regain the WH. (If our country lasts that long.)
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Sounds to me that the Pentagon is saying that they have LOTS of spare cash lying around that they just don’t need. We need to adjust their budget downward.
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I’d like to see where the money would have been spent had it not been diverted. Maybe displayed on a map of red and blue states. I’m wondering if they were able to engineer this so as to primarily hurt blue states.
My understanding is that it can only come from military construction projects. This is a good short article and the full list is available by clicking on “list” in the first sentence. I don’t think they could fund it all from blue state projects, there is also a ton of work to be done overseas in Germany, Guam, Japan, etc.
Massachusetts just had a couple of projects at Hanscom Air Force Base and Westover Air Force Reserve for a total of $154,000,000. There is almost a billion in school construction alone, mostly overseas but there are school projects at Ft. Campbell Kentucky and Ft. Bragg, NC.
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The U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Tuesday denied the Pentagon’s plan to shift $1 billion to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, a move that while largely symbolic, highlights the concern lawmakers have about using the defense budget to pay for the wall.
A court battle over the issue is also likely.
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