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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, Democrats continue to propose thoughtful, effective solutions to the humanitarian crisis at our southern border.

In February, after the President finally ended his government shutdown, I helped write an omnibus appropriations bill that included $564 million for inspection equipment at ports of entry to detect lethal narcotics and $414 million for humanitarian assistance at the border.

Last week, I and a number of my colleagues are reintroducing a comprehensive bill to address the root causes of the humanitarian crisis coming out of the Northern Triangle. Our bill cracks down on cartels and traffickers, provides for in-country processing so that refugees can seek protection without making a dangerous northbound journey, expands third-country resettlement in the region, and eliminates immigration court backlogs.

I note with regret that the President and his political appointees in the Department of Defense have other priorities. They continue to take from our military and ignore our military's readiness to build the President's medieval wall.

We all remember Donald Trump's idea that we need a 2,000-mile concrete wall from sea to shining sea and his claim that Mexico would pay for it. He said it some 200 times on the campaign trail and in the Oval Office.

When Mexico said no, the President told the military they would have to pay for it. On February 15, President Trump announced that he would go around Congress and build the wall with $6.1 billion that Congress gave to our military. After the announcement, the President was asked if he had consulted his military advisers first. He said that they told him some of the tradeoffs, but, ``It didn't sound too important to me.''

In March, Acting Secretary Shanahan took the first step: taking $1 billion appropriated by Congress for military pay and pensions to use for the wall. DOD told us that they had more money than they needed because the Army missed their recruiting goals.

At a hearing that same week, Secretary of the Army Mark Esper admitted that the Army hadn't budgeted for paying the salaries of the troops on the border, and they were short $350 million. Why didn't Acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan take this $1 billion of extra funds and give some to the Army? His notification to Congress laid it out in disappointing detail. He labeled the wall a ``higher priority.''

It is incredible that these are the priorities of the President and Acting Secretary Shanahan: wall first, military last.

Then on May 10, Acting Secretary Shanahan did it again, but he took $1.5 billion from the military this time. The Washington Post headline the next day said it all: ``Pentagon will pull money from ballistic missile and surveillance plane programs to fund border wall.''

Once again, the Pentagon claimed that the funds were extra, that the Pentagon couldn't spend this missile defense money and surveillance money this year for various reasons. Once again, the ``higher priority'' was the wall.

But the Army isn't the only one in need. Each military service is blinking red. Last month, in a leaked memo, the head of the Marine Corps, General Neller, said that the President's decision was contributing to ``unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency.''

General Neller noted that the marines had already pulled out of three military exercises and were cutting back on combat equipment maintenance because there wasn't enough money to go around. He noted that Hurricanes Florence and Michael last year had done $3.6 billion in damage to Camp Lejeune and other Marine Corps property. He said that marines were living in ``compromised housing,'' with another hurricane season starting up this June. He also warned that he might also have to cancel more than a dozen additional exercises if the marines didn't get budget help. Once again, we are seeing the wall is first, and the military is last.

In an unusual move late last month, Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson published an op-ed highlighting the impact of several natural disasters on Air Force bases. In October 2018, Hurricane Michael inflicted $4.7 billion of damage on Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. In March 2019, a historic flood inundated Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, submerging dozens of buildings. The Senate continues to work on an emergency supplemental to make a down payment on repairs at these bases, as well as at Camp Lejeune, but in the meantime, this $1.5 billion could have jump started repairs months ago. Once again, the wall came first, and the military came last.

In each case, the Pentagon didn't ask me to approve these transfers as it normally does. As vice chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I have different priorities, the ones I have mentioned, and so they went around me and the rest of Congress.

Also still to come is the $3.6 billion from cancelling important military construction projects. The damage continues to pile up. These harmful decisions will continue until my Republican colleagues side with our military over a campaign pledge. I hope they think long and hard about which one of those is more important.

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