From abcnews.go.com
Family housing for service members in Wisconsin and South Korea, schools on military bases in Germany, and upgrades to Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Air Force bases in Alaska could be on the chopping block with President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration to use billions in military construction money to build a border wall.
The president declared a national emergency from the White House Rose Garden Friday after signing the declaration, a move administration officials argued would free up funds appropriated by Congress for military construction to help build the wall, and allow Trump to deliver on his campaign pledge after congressional Democrats repeatedly rejected his demands.
Under the terms of the declaration, the administration would have access to $3.5 billion from the Pentagon’s military construction budget, along with $2.5 billion from the Pentagon’s drug interdiction program and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture fund.
Funding dedicated to military housing construction, however, will not be diverted to the border, a Pentagon spokesman said.
“Military family housing will not be affected,” the spokesman, Capt. Bill Speaks, said.
The $3.5 billion in military construction funds could be taken from a wide range of projects, including landing pads and maintenance facilities for the new F-35 fighter jet in California; waste management facilities at Guantanamo Bay; a high school for military children in Japan; and special operations forces training facilities in North Carolina, according to a list of projects provided to ABC News by a congressional aide.
When asked whether the decision could harm morale in the military and among military families, Trump claimed Friday that military officials told him they felt the border wall was more important than the projects that could be canceled or delayed.
“Some of them haven’t been allocated yet and some of the generals think that this is more important. I was speaking to a couple of them. They think this is far more important than what they were going to use it for. I said: ‘What were you going to use it for?’ and I won’t go into details, but didn’t sound too important to me,” Trump said.
