Congressman won’t support taking money away from vets to build border wall
Texas Border Business
Washington — Yesterday, Reps. Henry Cuellar (TX-28) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23) introduced an amendment to prohibit the use of military construction funds to build a border wall in the Military Construction/Veterans Affairs and Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee Markup for FY19.
Congress has not authorized any military funding to build border barriers. The amendment would ensure the Administration could not exploit emergency construction funding intended to fix issues of national security, health or safety to fund construction of a wall.
“The border wall is bad policy regardless of how it is funded, but it certainly should not be built at the expense of our military installations,” said Congressman Cuellar. “That is why Rep. Wasserman Schultz and I introduced an amendment in order to prevent allocating funds towards constructing a 14th-century border wall along the southern border that will take funding away from military construction.
“Construction of a wall will be a complete waste of Department of Defense’s (DoD) resources,” Congressman Cuellar continued. “The fact is that DoD has a $116 billion maintenance backlog. We must make sure these funds are not misappropriated for anything other than genuine military construction. Private and state-owned lands constitute the remaining 67 percent of the border, most of which is located in Texas, including a significant portion in my district. A wall would create an unnecessary burden on landowners and take property away from families who have lived on the border for generations.”
“I look forward to continuing to work through committee markups on these important issues and would like to thank Chairman Dent and Ranking Member Wasserman Schulz for their work on this bill.”
The amendment was voted down by Republicans during Committee markup.
See video from the markup here.
 and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23) introduced an amendment to prohibit the use of military construction funds to build a border wall in the Military Construction/Veterans Affairs and Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee Markup for FY19.){kind=link}