Pentagon Finds $12.8 Billion to Fund Trump’s Border Wall
The list contains projects that have funds “in excess of the amount needed.”
The Department of Defense has released a 20-page spreadsheet of military projects that have more funds than needed, which means adds up to $12.8 billion for President Donald Trump’s border wall.
From The Washington Examiner:
The Pentagon’s list said it has found possible funding sources that are “in excess of the amount needed.”
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But it’s not clear which projects the Defense Department will draw from. Some states that have been allocated big chunks of money that haven’t been spent could see a hit.
California, for example, was identified as having more than $700 million in unused Army and Navy military construction that could be used. Hawaii has more than $400 million that could be used.
More than $200 million in similar funding allocated for Hawaii, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Guam, Germany, Guam, and Guantanamo Bay Cuba are also on the list.
The Pentagon stated:
To identify the potential pool of sources of military construction funds, DoD will apply the following criteria:
• No military construction projects that already have been awarded, and no military construction projects with FY 2019 award dates will be impacted.
• No military housing, barracks, or dormitory projects will be impacted.
• The pool of potential military construction projects from which funding could be reallocated to support the construction of border barrier are solely projects with award dates after September 30, 2019.
For comprehensiveness, attached is a complete pool of all projects that were unawarded as of December 31, 2018. Once the above criteria is applied, the pool has a total value that is in excess of the amount needed to source potential section 2808 projects. The appearance of any project within the pool does not mean that the project will, in fact, be used to source section 2808 projects.
Trump wants $3.6 billion for border wall construction.
Trump declared a national emergency at the border last month when Congress agreed only to give him $1.4 billion. Congress attempted to stop this declaration, but Trump vetoed their resolution. Congress more than likely do not have the votes to override the veto.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, hopes this spreadsheet will convince his colleagues to vote to override Trump’s veto.
Trump Admin finally releases its list of at-risk #milcon projects that could be put on the chopping block in order to divert billions to pay for Trump’s ineffective #borderwall. Take a look – military bases in your state could be negatively impacted.
https://t.co/xJyDzjSITS— Senator Jack Reed (@SenJackReed) March 18, 2019
I mean, did Reed actually read what the Pentagon wrote? These are projects that appear to have been rewarded with too much money.
The spokesperson for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who chairs the Armed Services committee, countered Reed’s concerns. She reminded people that the spreadsheet “is not a list of projects that will definitively be impacted” and that the senator will work with the Pentagon to figure out which ones to pick “without negatively affecting any military construction projects.”
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It was the savings from not having to build new bathrooms for 57 additional genders in all the bases.
Reed is giving Roll-Over Party Senators an excuse to over ride Trump’s veto. Facts don’t matter just spin.
Porky Pigs slopping at the TaxPayer trough.
Lefty and rino congress-people….”But, but, but that’s MY money!!” Greed is a hallmark of the folks who would condescend to “lead” us.
ALL .gov people. Oregon has “the kicker,” which is a refund check of all state taxes which are collected in excess of 102% of the projected budget. In the tech hey-day most of us were getting sizeable kickers back, and of course there were always the letters to the editor saying to not cash it because .gov knew how to spend it better, etc. And even better were people complaining that some people got bigger kicker checks than others, ignoring of course that the kicker was a reflection of how much was paid in to the state in the first place.
As a fellow Oregonian, I agree with you. The kicker is hated by the legislature (rinos and dems alike). It’s “their” money! How DARE the state’s revenue gurus screw them and return the taxpayers’ withheld funds?
The Oregon legislators’ credo….If it doesn’t move, tax it. If it moves, tax it some more.
If they went through the rest of the government and ID’d funding (and over-funding)for unnecessary projects and congressional pork, they could get closer to a trillion.
“I mean, did Reed actually read what the Pentagon wrote? These are projects that appear to have been rewarded with too much money.”
Of course he did, and beyond that, projects that have too much money is a feature rather than a bug of government spending.
There is ZERO incentive to ask for less, save money, etc. in our current system. The system aggressively encourages wastefulness, to the point of penalizing conservation of funds.
Write a grant and find a way to do it cheaper? Find your budget slashed in the following year.
Try to write for less to discourage wastefulness and ask for more later? Nope, you should have asked for more up front and hoarded it.
What a load of gobbledygook. A list of projects which won’t be “impacted” if the money is spent elsewhere. But if it’s all money “in excess of the amount needed” then no projects, listed or not, will be affected. (Impacted. Whatever.) That’s what “excess of the amount needed” means.
As a poor abused taxpayer, I don’t care where the money comes from, particularly if it comes out of California’s piece of the pie chart.
Helps further undermine standing issues in that CA lead multi-state challenge against the Presdident’s emergency declaration. How can they complain about funds being diverted from projects when projects are being funded, just not in excess?
And of course the first thing the Dems do is lie straight to the faces of their audience that the words that Trump said *really* don’t mean what we heard, and actually what he said was (says something 180 degrees away).
As a reminder, el savior robbed all of the time from other projects.
Media and Dems were mum.
http://capwealthgroup.com/3658/did-obama-rob-fannie-freddie-to-fund-obamacare/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/legalnewsline/2017/10/24/a-smoking-gun-internal-docs-reveal-obama-dojs-slush-fund-judiciary-chair-says/#410c297ecb88
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/08/02/obama-trump-and-the-perils-of-illegal-obamacare-subsidies/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.451f730e38ea
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/top-10-ways-obama-violated-constitution-during-presidency
Senator you refer to walls as “ineffective.”
Has the border wall in the San Diego area been effective?
Are you a liar or a moron? Which is it?
Those categories are not exclusive.
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the Dept. of Defense, correct?
What does defense mean?
If it means, as in the 1828 dictionary (http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/defense ) 1. Any thing that opposes attack, violence, danger or injury; any thing that secures the person, the rights or the possessions of men; fortification; guard; protection; security. A wall, a parapet, a ditch, or a garrison, is the defense of a city or fortress, then building a wall is the Appropriate use of the department of Defense.
Unfortunately, modern dictionaries (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defense ) add this to their definitions: “government : the military and industrial aggregate that authorizes and supervises arms production” – meaning that it is the military arm of the government. In my interpretation of the founders intent is that the military was to be used for defense of our borders and waters. Not police the world.
IMHO – this is one of the FEW appropriate uses for moneys sent to the Dept. of Defense – and tell me exactly why we have a Dept. of Homeland Security when we have a Defense?
“”tell me exactly why we have a Dept. of Homeland Security when we have a Defense?””
The bureaucrat’s (in this case Bush ’41) first reaction when faced with an unanticipated event (9/11) is to create a new bureaucracy. In the case of globalists, the second impulse is to go out and attack somebody, even if they had nothing to do with said event.
Bush ’43. I get them mixed up.
Poor, poor motor mouth and swamp gadfly Coulter will be selling her books out of the trunk of her car while the wall is being built.
I live in the DC area.
I was wondering what all those explosions were about. Guess it was a bunch of heads bursting.
Republican and Democrat.
https://youtu.be/ZD24VY0YWdQ?t=44
Positive progress. A wall will reduce opportunity for illegal immigration and human trafficking, cross-border civil and human rights violations, and facilitate processing and quarantine of refugees. This is the first step to emigration reform that will address collateral damage from immigration reform at both ends of the bridge and throughout.
“Trump Admin finally releases its list of at-risk #milcon projects that could be put on the chopping block in order to divert billions to pay for Trump’s ineffective #borderwall.” – Jack Reed
What evidence does this guy have to show that a wall along the border will be ‘ineffective’? That’s what I thought, none whatsoever. Someone in the media should ask him, but they won’t, we know about the media.
I’m not convinced Trump will actually order construction of this wall, but if he does you can be certain the quislings in the Congressional GOP will vote with the Democrats to cut him off at the knees. They care more about what the Democrat-run media say about them than they do about doing the right thing. I’m also pretty certain that the next “resistance” strategy progressives employ is to win wall construction projects and do everything they can to sabotage things while getting paid for it. Delays, sub-par construction, you name it.
“I’m not convinced Trump will actually…”
Are you convinced he will appoint conservative Supreme court justices?
Are you convinced he will appoint conservatives to the federal judiciary?
Are you convinced economic growth will be restored?
Are you convinced the unemployment rate will decrease?
Are you convinced Trump will increase defense spending?
Are you convinced Trump will work for tax decreases and see it pass congress?
Are you convinced Trump will defeat ISIS?
Are you convinced Trump will cut regulations?
Are you convinced Trump will exit us from the Paris climate accord?
Why are you so difficult to convince?
As an enlisted in the Army, I saw first hand that govt budgeting is screwy and wasteful. I’m not talking the infamous $500 hammers or $1000 toilets, I’m talking everything.
As an IT wiennie, I saw needed mainframe purchases delayed repeatedly because politicians would intervene when the Computer company in THEIR district didn’t get the contract. Then when three years later those hoops were jumped thru, delayed again for another year because a congress committee wanted to “investigate” WHY the procurement was so much behind schedule. Idiots.
I saw money allocated (but delayed) for a training library finally come thru to convert building space to house it and fill it with microfiche and computers for soldiers needing the training.
SIX months before that space was reconverted to working offices so programmers wouldn’t have to share working desks three to a desk and work three shifts. Our section was given first dibs at it, because we grunts were willing to volunteer to go in with crowbars and sledgehammers and tear down all the old-new construction so the command wouldn’t have to let out bids for the demolition and pay some civilians to do it – a year from now.
But the Bad Bad Of Waste was the overall budget process.
A command had to guess what they needed ahead of time, often before they knew what their tasking and personnel numbers would be. Same for each section in the command.
If, at the end of a fiscal year you ran out of funds early, you were f@cked.
If, at the end of a fiscal year you had funds left over (maybe the personal you were supposed to get didn’t materialize, maybe a project or major purchase for a project got delayed) the money didn’t roll over – even if the need for it was only delayed. If you didn’t spend it on SOMETHING, it went away and you usually got punished by having you next years budget slashed by that amount.
Sometimes something useful could be purchased at end-of-budget-year like a dozen laptops. Sometimes something only slightly useful like a $20k auto-collator for 6-part wide printer paper.
It had to be something expensive enuf to eat the funds without requiring a bid process – so often the bang for the buck just wasn’t there.
If Trump and the Brass were smart enuf to not punish groups willing to admit they had funds in excess of this years requirement, it makes sense they could find 12 billion to reallocate.
“As an enlisted in the Army, I saw first hand that govt budgeting is screwy and wasteful. I’m not talking the infamous $500 hammers or $1000 toilets, I’m talking everything.”
I saw both sides of it, as a naval officer and then after I left active duty as a government contractor. It was when I started working in the defense industry that I got a lesson in why those hammers and toilets are so expensive. And it usually has noting to do with actually making the hammers and toilets.
When I joined the company (I don’t want to name it) my first job was working on a Navy program developing interactive computer training for a new sonar system. Another company was actually building the sonar. They were way behind and well overbudget. We developed all the training materials that we could for the sonar system but we couldn’t develop much since it’s difficult to develop training materials for a sonar system that is only half built. We then developed other materials for the ASW training center; projects that were basically sitting on the shelf just waiting to be worked on.
When we developed all the training materials we could, the Navy fired us. And the other contractor that couldn’t build the sonar got the training contract.
So I transferred to another program. It was a classified program for an agency I don’t want to mention. The agency got a new director and he decided he was going to put is stamp on the agency, and enhance is resume, by demanding we classify the unclassified cover name.
Just because the program was classified doesn’t mean every single document was classied. That’t the whole point of having an unclassified cover name. Most of our administrative staff didn’t have clearances at all, but for administrative tasks they don’t need clearances as they had no need to know any classified information. Only the engineers needed to know that.
So if this idiot now running the agency got his way we’d have to go through several hundred thousand documents and determine the appropriate classification level. Then we’d have to buy who knows how many new safes to properly store the newly classified documents. Then we’d have to apply for clearances for people who never needed them before. We’d also have to renovate the SCIF because those people couldn’t work on those documents outside the SCIF.
All in all it was going to be wildly expensive. This is how you get five hundred dollar hampers and thousand dollar toilets. Depending on the type of contract, as in on what basis the government pays, you may have to roll administrative costs and salaries into the cost of each item.
Those Senior Executive Service types staffing the upper echelons of government agencies don’t care about money that isn’t there. So they’ll have a brainstorm and come up with something out of left field that’s a huge waste of time and money.
Well lookie here! I just found 12.8 billion in the pocket of my britches that I wore last week.
Armed forces budget issues are a hoot. In the USN when expanding a naval base we would build the port facilities, the POL farm, the repair facilities, etc. Then we’d run out of money and have to go back to Congress and ask form more so we could build housing and rec facilities. We wouldn’t always get it.
The USAF would build the officer’s, NCO’s, and enlisted clubs first, then housing, a golf course, the gym, other rec facilities, etc. When they ran out of money they’d go back to Congress and ask for more money for the runways, hangars, other support facilities, etc. They always got the money.