President Donald Trump is expected to sign a compromise spending bill that rushed through Congress Thursday to ensure the government stays open past Friday night, according to news reports citing White House officials. He is also expected to declare a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border. The President is scheduled to address border security at a White House event Friday morning.
A national emergency declaration is sure to get pushback from Capitol Hill and perhaps the courts. But such a declaration would allow the President to move money around to build a border wall.
The chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate armed services committees are opposed to using military construction funding for the wall, as On Base has reported.
“I encourage the President not to divert significant Department of Defense funding for border security,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said Thursday evening. “Doing so would have detrimental consequences for our troops, as military infrastructure was one of the accounts most deprived during the Obama-era defense cuts.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo by Robert Bushell
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When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell steps down from his Senate leadership role after the November elections, he’ll have at least two more years in the Senate. Now he’s signaled one of his priorities as a rank-and-file Senator is to increase defense funding,...
