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Democratic lawmakers fought back Tuesday against the defense ministry's plans to transfer up to $ 1 billion in military funding to pay for 57 km of fences along the US-Mexico border. armed with the House calling him "incredibly irresponsible". "
The Pentagon said Monday in Congress that it had authorized the transfer of funds under federal law allowing it to "build roads and fences and install lighting to block the corridors. smuggling drugs across the international borders of the United States to support counter-narcotics activities, federal law enforcement agencies. "
The Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee, Adam Smith, D-Wash., Said in a statement that Congress had given the Department of Defense the authority to reallocate a limited amount of funds "in order to give them more flexibility to manage their daily operations.The recent DoD report the notification of its intention to use this process to reprogram a billion dollars without congressional approval is a violation of that trust. "
During a hearing with Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan and other Pentagon leaders, Smith sent a letter from the committee to the Department of Defense, rejecting his formal request for transfer of l & # 39; money. The committee does not have the legal authority to block the transfer, but could amend the law to block any funding changes in the future.
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"You do not ask our permission," says Smith to Shanahan. "Now, you understand that the result of this is probably that the credit committee will no longer give reprogramming power to the Pentagon."
In response, Shanahan told lawmakers that he knew that the use of funds for the border wall was likely to lose the confidence of lawmakers.
"We said:" Here are the risks, in the longer term, for the department, "said the acting secretary." And these risks were weighed and then, on the legal order of the commander-in-chief, we execute that order. "
A congressional aide told Fox News that the Pentagon's redistribution of funds over legislators' objections was "a decade-long break from tradition on Capitol Hill."
David Norquist, chief of the department's budget, told lawmakers that the money intended to finance construction in the Yuma and El Paso border areas would come from a personal account of the army. More than 6,000 new soldiers have failed in this branch of the service.
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Shanahan was planning to use funds from a Pentagon anti-drug account for the border fence, but officials told Fox News Tuesday that this account contained only about 85 millions of dollars.
Last week, the Pentagon sent Capitol Hill a list of more than 400 military construction projects, totaling about $ 13 billion, that could be leveraged for wall-to-wall financing. But Shanahan said funding for military housing or barracks would not be affected, as would projects for which contracts would be awarded by the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30. When these projects are removed, about 150 remain, about $ 4.3 billion.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
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