TheCount
04-02-2018, 05:43 PM
TL;DR: No.
President Trump can’t seem to find the funds to fulfill his signature campaign pledge of building a border wall—and his Plan C could get even more complicated.
On the campaign trail, Trump insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall, a proposal that the Mexican government quickly shut down (https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/03/mexico-president-trump-wall/472686/). Once in office, Trump looked to Congress to foot the bill, but lawmakers—many of whom are unconvinced there’s a need for additional construction—only allocated $1.6 billion for the wall in the $1.3 trillion spending package they passed earlier this month. The figure falls well short of the $25 billion that Trump asked for, and most of the funds are for repairing existing barriers, not mounting new ones.
Now, Trump has reportedly (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-privately-presses-for-military-to-pay-for-border-wall/2018/03/27/d79907a2-31c9-11e8-9759-56e51591e250_story.html?utm_term=.bc2fa4d9aced) floated the idea of the U.S. military footing the bill—a move that would dramatically change how the government has approached border security in recent years. The Department of Defense has much deeper pockets than the Department of Homeland Security to pull from, but any attempt to use DOD funds would likely face serious obstacles in Congress and perhaps even legal challenges. Shifting some of the responsibility of securing the border from DHS, which has long had jurisdiction, to DOD would mean putting the department in a position to lead where it’s chiefly held a supporting role.
Using DOD money for the wall would likely require congressional approval. But “the bigger question is whether Congress really wants the president treating something that has historically been a law-enforcement enterprise as a defense enterprise, as a military enterprise,” said Christopher Swift, an adjunct professor of national-security studies at Georgetown University and a partner in the national-security practice at Foley & Lardner, LLP, an international law firm. News reports on Trump’s plan haven’t specified whether DOD would have full control over the wall, its construction, and patrols of the surrounding areas. But security experts I spoke with think that’s a possibility. Attempts to have the department fund the wall but not oversee it would likely result in an “administrative nightmare,” Swift said.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/can-the-us-military-build-trumps-border-wall/556967/
President Trump can’t seem to find the funds to fulfill his signature campaign pledge of building a border wall—and his Plan C could get even more complicated.
On the campaign trail, Trump insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall, a proposal that the Mexican government quickly shut down (https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/03/mexico-president-trump-wall/472686/). Once in office, Trump looked to Congress to foot the bill, but lawmakers—many of whom are unconvinced there’s a need for additional construction—only allocated $1.6 billion for the wall in the $1.3 trillion spending package they passed earlier this month. The figure falls well short of the $25 billion that Trump asked for, and most of the funds are for repairing existing barriers, not mounting new ones.
Now, Trump has reportedly (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-privately-presses-for-military-to-pay-for-border-wall/2018/03/27/d79907a2-31c9-11e8-9759-56e51591e250_story.html?utm_term=.bc2fa4d9aced) floated the idea of the U.S. military footing the bill—a move that would dramatically change how the government has approached border security in recent years. The Department of Defense has much deeper pockets than the Department of Homeland Security to pull from, but any attempt to use DOD funds would likely face serious obstacles in Congress and perhaps even legal challenges. Shifting some of the responsibility of securing the border from DHS, which has long had jurisdiction, to DOD would mean putting the department in a position to lead where it’s chiefly held a supporting role.
Using DOD money for the wall would likely require congressional approval. But “the bigger question is whether Congress really wants the president treating something that has historically been a law-enforcement enterprise as a defense enterprise, as a military enterprise,” said Christopher Swift, an adjunct professor of national-security studies at Georgetown University and a partner in the national-security practice at Foley & Lardner, LLP, an international law firm. News reports on Trump’s plan haven’t specified whether DOD would have full control over the wall, its construction, and patrols of the surrounding areas. But security experts I spoke with think that’s a possibility. Attempts to have the department fund the wall but not oversee it would likely result in an “administrative nightmare,” Swift said.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/can-the-us-military-build-trumps-border-wall/556967/