More than one-third of the money President Donald Trump wants to redirect from other federal programs to build a border barrier is likely to be unavailable from the sources he has identified.
As a result, it may be difficult for the president to circumvent Congress, even if a resolution disapproving of his “emergency” moves is never enacted.
Trump announced Feb. 15 that, using emergency powers, he wants to divert as much as $6.7 billion from other programs to finance the construction of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. That includes $3.6 billion from unspent military construction money, $2.5 billion in unspent Pentagon counterdrug funds and $600 million from a Treasury Department asset forfeiture account.
View the complete February 21 article by John M. Donnelly on The Roll Call website here.