Pentagon lists likely cuts to pay for wall

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon sent a 20-page list of military construction projects to Congress on Monday that might be slashed to pay for President Donald Trump’s wall along the Mexican border. Democrats expressed hope that by knowing which local projects could be targeted, lawmakers would be likelier to override Trump’s veto of a measure aimed at preventing the cuts.

“Now that members of Congress can see the potential impact this proposal could have on projects in their home states, I hope they will take that into consideration before the vote to override the President’s veto,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

With the House scheduled to vote today on overriding Trump’s veto, the spokesman for the top GOP vote counter predicted the president will prevail anyway.

“House Republicans have stood strongly with President Trump on securing our nation’s border and overwhelmingly supported his emergency declaration by large margins when we voted on this weeks ago; this will not change,” said Lauren Fine, spokesman for No. 2 House GOP leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

The Pentagon document listed hundreds of projects envisioned around the U.S. and world worth around $12.9 billion. Not all will be subject to cuts, the Defense Department wrote.

Trump declared a national emergency at the Mexican boundary last month after Congress limited him to just under $1.4 billion to build border barriers. He invoked a law that would let him siphon other budget funds — $3.6 billion from military construction — to build the structures.

In a letter accompanying the list, Defense Department officials said they wouldn’t touch items for which money would be awarded by the Sept. 30 end of this fiscal year or for projects like housing. They didn’t specify which would be exempted.

A spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Armed Services panel, said the document “is not a list of projects that will definitively be impacted.” The spokesman said Inhofe will continue working with defense officials to find targets “without negatively affecting any military construction projects.”