WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Vice Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, today released the following statement after the Senate failed to override President Donald Trump’s veto of the national emergency declaration termination. Last month, the Senate voted to reject President Trump’s emergency declaration, for the second time, by a bipartisan vote of 54-41.
“I am disappointed that my Republican colleagues didn’t join Senate Democrats in choosing the Constitution over the President’s so-called ‘national emergency’ declaration. As long as my colleagues continue to give him the green light, President Trump will continue to put his ‘big and beautiful’ wall ahead of the needs of the U.S. military.”
Last week, the Senate learned that the Department of Defense (DoD) engaged in an unprecedented funding maneuver, in which certain costs for support of the Afghan security forces’ counternarcotics efforts were quietly changed to another appropriation. This resulted in $129 million of the congressionally-approved counternarcotics funding not being spent as originally described or intended. In turn, these funds were shifted, without prior notice to the congressional defense committees, to pay for increased costs for President Trump’s border wall. This action brings the total military funding diverted from the troops and their families for the ineffective border wall to $6.2 billion.
