WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump's order to shift military funds to build a wall at the southern border will hamper the Pentagon's ability to reprogram funds to meet defense needs in the future, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan conceded.
"We said, 'Here are the risks longer-term to the department' and those risks were weighed,"' Shanahan said Tuesday at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. "Given a legal order from the commander in chief, we are executing on that order."
Shanahan gave approval on Monday for the Army Corps of Engineers to use as much as $1 billion in military funds to bolster security at the U.S.-Mexico border. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, he said the money would be used to support her agency's request to build 57 miles of "18-foot-high pedestrian fencing, constructing and improving roads, and installing lighting within the Yuma and El Paso Sectors of the border."
The decision marked the latest development in Trump's push to shift Defense Department funds to build the border wall that was a central promise of his 2016 campaign after Congress wouldn't provide the money. And it comes amid uncertainty over whether Shanahan, a former Boeing Co. executive who was deputy defense secretary under former Secretary Jim Mattis, will be nominated by Trump to fill the Pentagon's top job.
Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate have said the Pentagon's move all but ensures they'll push to restrict the department's ability to unilaterally shift funds in the future, forcing it to seek congressional approval for all such transfers.
The $1 billion was taken from military personnel funds and shifted to the Defense Department's Drug Interdiction and Counter-Narcotics Activities account. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Acting Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist said the money was available because the Army fell more than 9,000 recruits short of its goal last year.
A group of Democratic senators criticized the funding shift in a letter to Shanahan on Monday. Senators led by Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Dick Durbin of Illinois said they had "serious concerns that the department has allowed political interference and pet projects to come ahead of many near-term, critical readiness issues facing our military."
The senators said they strongly objected to the funding transfer from the "military personnel funding to the Drug Interdiction and Counter-Narcotics Activities account."
"The $1 billion reprogramming that the department is implementing without congressional approval constitutes a dollar-for-dollar theft from other readiness needs of our Armed Forces," the senators wrote.
The annual defense authorization bill and defense spending bill give the Pentagon authority to move funds between programs. Traditionally, the Defense Department has sought agreement on such reprogramming from the leaders of the Armed Services and Appropriations panels in House and Senate.
With the Trump administration scrapping that approval process in this case, lawmakers warned they're likely to take away that power in the future.
While conceding that the funding shift could come back to haunt the Pentagon in years ahead, Shanahan said he was trying to be transparent about the move of funds to the border, "fully knowing that there are downsides that will hamper us."
