Hurting the military for his own benefit
Opinion by Frida Ghitis
Updated 4:03 PM ET, Sat September 7, 2019
President Donald Trump may have put on his Sharpie spectacle this week to distract us from a much bigger outrage. The Trump administration is taking $3.6 billion from approved military construction projects to pay for part of the wall. Yes, that wall — the one Trump said Mexico would pay for ...
The wall is a fantasy conjured by Trump to get elected. While Trump has imbued the wall with near-mythical powers, many experts say it will do little to stop the current flow of migrants from Central America, who typically turn themselves over to authorities to seek asylum, rather than trying to sneak in undetected. In the horror story Trump told voters in 2016, America was being invaded by rapists, drug dealers and other criminals who "threatened" the country ...
Trump barely mentions Mexico anymore. Now, it turns out, he wants to pay for a portion of the wall by taking money legally appropriated by Congress, which has the power of the purse under the Constitution and using it for what is essentially a self-serving political project. It's no wonder there are multiple lawsuit challenging Trump's authority to derail and reroute congressionally mandated spending by declaring a national emergency.
Trump is doing this by using a statute allowing presidents to take military money for emergencies. While plenty of Presidents have utilized the National Emergencies Act since it was enacted in 1976, no other president has used it to circumvent congressional refusal to fund a pet project. A certain honor system prevented previous administrations from abusing the power to declare national emergencies. But it appears there's a shortage of honor in the Oval Office these days, where decisions affecting the national interest are routinely contaminated by the President's interest ...
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/07/opinions/trump-border-wall-military-construction-funds-ghitis/index.html
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