Trump’s plan to strip planes, ships, and vehicles from Pentagon budget to fund border wall draws bipartisan howls of protest from Congress

ASKING NEITHER FORGIVENESS NOR PERMISSION: In an audacious challenge to legislative branch’s power of the purse, the Trump administration has notified Congress it intends to take $3.8 billion from major weapons programs, warfighting funds, and the National Guard to pay for construction of hundreds of miles of additional border wall before the November election.

The reprogramming action sent to Capitol Hill yesterday cites the urgent need to deter drug smuggling across the southern border — not stopping illegal immigration — as an “unforeseen military requirement,” which it argues is “necessary in the national interest.”

BIPARTISAN OUTRAGE: The notification that the Pentagon was unilaterally eliminating planes, ships, vehicles and other equipment — that in many cases Congress had added to the president’s original FY 2020 budget — touched off an explosion of outrage, even among some Republicans who support funding for the border wall.

“Congress has the constitutional responsibility to determine how defense dollars are spent. We take the Pentagon’s recommendations seriously during our deliberations, but the final decisions are contained in the bills passed by Congress and signed into law. Once those choices have been made, the Department of Defense cannot change them in pursuit of their own priorities without the approval of Congress,” said Texas Republican Mac Thornberry, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. “The re-programming announced today is contrary to Congress’s constitutional authority.”