The Pentagon is putting $1 billion toward the wall — and House Democrats can’t stop them

The Department of Defense has always asked Congress for permission to move money around. Until now.

By Dara Lind @ Vox.com, Mar 26, 2019, 3:00pm EDT

The Department of Defense is moving $1 billion out of a military personnel fund to be used to construct 57 miles of border “wall” — provoking strident (but impotent) objections from Democrats in Congress and setting up a big fight over next year’s Pentagon budget.

On Monday night, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan issued a letter to the Department of Homeland Security informing them that he’d made $1 billion “available” for wall construction, by moving it into a military account for drug enforcement — one of the three pots of money the Trump administration is tapping under its declaration of national emergency. (The logic is that the wall will impede drug-smuggling corridors, though all available evidence suggests that the majority of drugs smuggled into the US through Mexico come via official ports of entry.)

Leaders of the congressional committees overseeing the Pentagon that same day got notification of $1 billion in “reprogramming” — shifting funds from one government agency or account to another — from the military-personnel fund to the drug-enforcement fund.

House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith (D-WA) formally rejected that notice in a letter today: “The committee does not approve the use of Department of Defense funds to construct additional physical barriers,” he wrote.

But the letter was meaningless [....]