Trump’s Risky Plan to Get $8 Billion for His Wall

Plus, what he said on the national debt

Trump’s Risky Plan to Get $8 Billion for His Border Wall

He really did it. President Trump on Friday declared a national emergency in an attempt to bypass Congress and redirect existing funds toward construction of his promised wall along the southern border.

The emergency declaration is intended to enable the president to tap into more than $6.5 billion in taxpayer funding to use for additional barriers. Under the emergency declaration and other executive authority, the White House is seeking to draw $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from a Defense Department drug interdiction program and $600 million from a Treasury Department drug forfeiture fund.

"What's not on that list is taking away disaster relief money from places like Texas and Puerto Rico," Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters, according to CNBC.

The redirected money would be in addition to the $1.375 billion for border fencing approved by Congress on Thursday as part of a spending deal to avoid another partial government shutdown. (Trump signed the spending bill on Friday.)  Combined, the total funding for barriers would be $8 billion.

Senior White House officials said Friday that the money would be “back-filled” in the president’s 2020 budget request, Roll Call’s John T. Bennett reported, adding, “That means U.S. taxpayers would pay for every penny of the wall in fiscal 2019 — even though Trump long promised that Mexico would pay for it.”

The president’s declaration met with significant opposition and is certain to generate lawsuits and legislative challenges. A number of Republicans cautioned Trump against making the declaration, and Democrats called the move a violation of the constitution’s separation of powers and a threat to Congress’ most fundamental responsibility, the power of the purse.

"This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed President, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement. “The President’s actions clearly violate the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, which our Founders enshrined in the Constitution. The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the Courts, and in the public, using every remedy available.”

In rambling remarks from the White House Rose Garden, Trump said he anticipated the legal challenge winding up before the Supreme Court — and seemingly undermined his case for an emergency. “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this,” Trump said, “but I’d rather do it much faster.”

Trump on the $22 Trillion National Debt: ‘Growth Will Straighten It Out’

President Trump was asked at his wide-ranging press conference Friday about the roughly $2 trillion increase in public debt during the first two years of his administration:

Question: Let me also ask you about the debt, sir, because it's gone from a shade under $20 trillion from when you took office. Now it's a shade over $22 trillion and heading in the wrong direction. What are your plans to reverse it?

President Trump: Well, it's all about growth. But before I really focus on that  and you have to remember, President Obama put on more debt on this country than every president in the history of our country combined. So when I took over, we had one man that put on more debt than every other president combined. Combine them all. So you can't be talking about that. But I talk about it because I consider it very important.

But first I have to straighten out the military. The military was depleted. And if we don't have a strong military that hopefully we won't have to use because it's strong -- if we don't have a strong military, you don't have to worry about debt. You have bigger problems. So I had to straighten out the military. That's why I did the 700 and $716 billion [in annual defense budgets].

But growth will straighten it out. You saw last month the trade deficit went way down. Everybody said, "What happened?" Well, what's happening is growth. But before I can focus too much on that, a very big expense is military. And we have no choice but to straighten out our military.

Tweet of the Day

The University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler, who won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for his work in behavioral economics, tells Bloomberg’s Joe Wiesenthal why smaller tax refunds could be a political problem, even if they’re economically rational.

A Modest Start for the Space Force

The Pentagon is expected to request about $270 million for the Space Force in its 2020 budget, according to a preliminary Department of Defense memo reviewed by Space News’ Sandra Erwin.



The funds would be used for a Space Force headquarters ($64 million), the Space Development Agency ($120 million) and U.S. Space Command ($84 million). About $76 million would be transferred from existing accounts, with the rest presumably representing new requests.



Erwin says the numbers are “modest compared to multibillion-dollar estimates that have been floated in the past several months,” but could grow rapidly in the next few years as the Space Force absorbs more than $10 billion worth of programs and personnel currently housed in the Air Force, Army and Navy.

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Your Prize for Making It Through the Week

Some say the longhaired dachshund was robbed, but it’s hard to be too upset at the winner of this year’s Westminster Dog Show, a wire fox terrier named King. Here’s a slideshow of the finalists and some scenes from the great canine show.

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