Pentagon Documents: Senate Republicans’ Failure to Prevent Raid on Military Funds Could Have “Dire Outcomes”
Washington Post: “In numerous cases, the Defense Department warned that lives would be put at risk” because of inaction on now-canceled military construction projects
The consequences of Senate Republicans’ failure to oppose the White House’s massive raid on military construction funds became clearer today, as a new Washington Post analysis reveals the Pentagon had warned — even before Republicans voted to uphold President Trump’s sham emergency declaration — “lives would be put at risk” if these projects were not funded. Nearly two weeks have gone by since vulnerable Senate Republicans learned that projects in their home states would be losing millions in urgently-needed funding, yet they still have yet to take action to reverse the reckless cash grab they enabled.
“Not only are Senate Republicans ducking responsibility for failing to protect their state’s military installations from reckless funding cuts, their spinelessness is threatening our national security and putting military personnel in harm’s way,” said DSCC spokesperson Stewart Boss. “Instead of owning up to their role in this shameful raid on military bases, vulnerable Republican Senators are trying to downplay and distract from how they’ve lost funding and potentially put lives at risk because they refuse to stand up to the White House. After voting to allow this cash grab from their states, Republican Senators’ bizarre new strategy is just the latest insult to their constituents.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Washington Post: Pentagon has warned of dire outcomes if military projects canceled for wall don’t happen
Aaron Gregg and Erica Werner
September 18, 2019
Key Points:
- The Pentagon warned of dire outcomes unless Congress paid for urgently needed military construction projects nationwide — the same projects that have now been canceled to fund President Trump’s border wall.
- The warnings are contained in Defense Department budget requests sent to lawmakers in recent years. They include potentially hazardous living conditions for troops and their families, as well as unsafe schools that would impede learning. In numerous cases, the Defense Department warned that lives would be put at risk if buildings don’t meet the military’s standards for fire safety or management of explosives.
- The details in the budget documents — annual requests the Pentagon sends to Capitol Hill that are mostly public — underscore the risky trade-offs Trump made in declaring a national emergency that allowed him to divert funding for the wall.
- In requests to Congress over the past three years, military officials describe dilapidated World War II-era warehouses with “leaking asbestos panel roof systems”; a drone pilot training facility with sinkholes and a bat infestation; explosives being stored in buildings that didn’t meet safety standards; and a mold-infested middle school. In numerous instances, Defense Department officials wrote that the infrastructure problems were hurting the military’s readiness, and impeding the department’s national security mission.
- In recent days, the fight over the border wall money has caused angry divisions among lawmakers trying to write annual spending bills to keep the government running, raising the specter of another shutdown later this year.
- In many cases, the Pentagon has been ominous in describing the potential outcomes should the projects not happen.
- Several of the defunded projects were supposed to replace unsafe buildings used to hold heavy munitions and military vehicles, the Defense Department said.
- Vehicle maintenance buildings at Fort Huachuca in Arizona date to the 1930s and ’40s and do not meet the Army’s standards for vehicle testing and maintenance, forcing service members to work in “unsafe” facilities that “jeopardize personnel health, security and safety,” the Army wrote in 2017.
- A different issue looms at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where medical and dental care is provided in “substandard, inefficient, decentralized and uncontrolled facilities,” according to the military, which has sought congressional approval to build a new ambulatory care center on the base. Not doing so “will result in compromised readiness, uncoordinated care delivery, and inappropriate use of medical resources,” the Pentagon said.
- At the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina, the military sought funding to build a satellite fire station, without which “personnel . . . will continue to work from a significantly undersized and unsafe facility.”
- In another example, the military is seeking to repair a middle school at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, a project that has been championed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
- The Pentagon described conditions at the middle school as “substandard,” and told lawmakers in requesting $62.6 million to repair it that “the continued use of deficient, inadequate, and undersized facilities that do not accommodate the current student population will continue to impair the overall education program for students.”
Read the full story here.
###
