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Pentagon May Tap Military Pay and Pensions for Border Wall

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is planning to tap $1 billion in funds from military pay and pension accounts to help President Trump pay for his border wall, a top Senate Democrat said Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is planning to tap $1 billion in funds from military pay and pension accounts to help President Trump pay for his border wall, a top Senate Democrat said Thursday.

FILE - This March 27, 2008, file photo, shows the Pentagon in Washington. Military officials want to limit congressional efforts to address sexual assaults among service members’ children, even as new data show the problem is larger than previously acknowledged. Members of Congress demanded answers after an Associated Press investigation revealed that many reports of child-on-child sexual violence on military installations languish in a dead zone of justice. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told The Associated Press: "It's coming out of military pay and pensions: $1 billion. That's the plan."

Durbin said the money is available because Army recruitment is down and a voluntary early military retirement program is being underutilized.

The development comes as Pentagon officials are seeking to minimize the amount of wall money that would come from military construction projects that are so cherished by lawmakers.

Durbin said, "Imagine the Democrats making that proposal — that for whatever our project is, we're going to cut military pay and pensions."

Durbin, the top Democrat on the Appropriations panel for the Pentagon, was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who met with Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Thursday morning.

The Pentagon is planning to transfer money from various accounts into a fund dedicated to drug interdiction, with the money then to be redirected for border barriers and other purposes.

More attention has been paid to Trump's declaration of a national emergency to tap up to $3.6 billion from military construction projects to pay for the wall. The Democratic-controlled House voted last month to reject Trump's move, and the Republican-held Senate is likely to follow suit next week despite a White House lobbying push.

Senate Republicans met again Wednesday to sort through their options in hopes of making next week's voting more politically palatable. They are struggling to come up with an alternative to simply voting up or down on the House measure, as required under a never-used Senate procedure to reject a presidential emergency declaration. Lawmakers in both parties believe Trump is inappropriately infringing on Congress' power of the purse.

Senators are increasingly uneasy before voting next week because they don't know where the money to build the wall will come from and if it will postpone military projects in their home states.

Vice President Mike Pence told senators during a meeting a week ago that he would get back to them with an update. But senators said they don't yet have a response from the administration.

"It's a concern," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. He said a number of senators have been talking to the White House about other ways the administration could shuffle money without relying on the authority under the emergency declaration, which is likely to become tied up in litigation.

The pitch is, "Why have this additional controversy when it could be done in a less controversial way?" Cornyn said. "Apparently, the White House is not persuaded."

The Army missed its recruiting goal this year, falling short by about 6,500 soldiers, despite pouring an extra $200 million into bonuses and approving additional waivers for bad conduct or health issues.

Congress appropriated money to give members of the military incentive to take early retirement, but enrollment in the program is coming in well under expectations.

"This is pay that would have gone to Army recruits that we can't recruit," Durbin said. "So there's a 'savings' because we can't recruit. The other part was they offered a voluntary change in military pensions, and they overestimated how many people would sign up for it."

Categories / Government, Politics

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