May 23, 2019

Duckworth in NDAA Negotiations: Congress Should Prevent Administration from Weakening Military Readiness by Diverting Critical Funds for Unnecessary Border Wall

 

[WASHINGTON, DC] – Combat Veteran and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have prohibited the U.S. Secretary of Defense from reprogramming critical national security funds intended for critical military construction projects and to counter drug trafficking in order to build a wall or fence on the southern border. 

“Trump’s repeated attempts to redirect money from critical national defense projects for a wasteful border wall are a distraction from real actions we could take to increase border security and reduce trafficking,” Duckworth said. “The Administration shouldn’t be allowed to harm our nation’s military readiness in order to score political points by building a wall – which is the most expensive and least effective way to secure our border - and I’ll keep working to ensure the National Defense Authorization Act makes that very clear to Donald Trump.”

Duckworth has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s attempts to build a wall on the southern border. In March, she voted to terminate Trump’s national emergency declaration to raid military construction funds to build the wall, calling it a “reckless and unprecedented abuse of presidential power.” Duckworth also criticized the Trump Administration’s announcement that they could use $55 million that Congress had allocated for Illinois military facilities in order to fund the border wall.

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