The White House isn't releasing a list of military construction projects whose funding could be diverted to President Donald Trump's border wall out of concern about the vote in Congress to override a presidential veto, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Sunday.
"This is the White House wanting to hold the list back because they worry that if senators and House members saw the potential projects that were going to be ransacked to pay for the president's wall, they would lose votes," Kaine said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told senators at hearing last Thursday that he would provide the list of bases potentially affected later that day, but he didn't. Trump issued his first veto a day later on a congressional resolution that would block his declaration of a national emergency to shift $3.6 billion from Pentagon construction projects for his promised wall on the southern U.S. border.
The president's proposed budget for fiscal 2020 would restore that money for military construction and provide an additional $3.6 billion "in case additional emergency funding is needed for the border," Shanahan said.
While votes for the resolution fell well short of the two-thirds support needed to overcome Trump's veto, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a March 26 vote.
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney questioned Kaine's comments, saying the administration has assured Congress that no programs scheduled to start before the end of September are affected.
"There's no list of projects that are absolutely going to not be funded so that the wall can be," Mulvaney said on CBS." He said the administration has only a list of construction projects that might have funds diverted. No such list has been released.
Regardless, Mulvaney said, Trump's veto will stand.
"We fully expect the veto override to fail in the House," he said.
