Pentagon wants Congress to replenish funds Trump taps for border wall

The Pentagon every year comes to Congress to defend its ever-growing budget, highlighting the decrepit military installations and decades-old equipment that must be refurbished or replaced to defend the nation.

But now, Pentagon officials are telling lawmakers that diverting dollars from defense projects to build President Donald Trump’s desired border wall is justified and won’t weaken the military — so long as Congress replenishes the accounts Trump could tap to build the wall.

In other words, Trump is betting on Congress to replenish those accounts in the fiscal 2020 spending bill.

Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the subcommittee’s chairwoman, called the plan an end-run around Congress.

“I’m not sure what kind of chumps you think my colleagues and I are,” Wasserman Schultz told McMahon. “What you’re doing is circumventing Congress to get funding for the wall, which you couldn’t get during the conference process, and instead coming back and trying to get us to replace the funding during the appropriations cycle.”