WASHINGTON -- The Senate has passed a measure that blocks President Donald Trump from using emergency powers to divert money budgeted for construction projects on military bases to pay for building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Eleven Republicans voted to rebuke the president on a 54-41 vote. The Democratic-controlled House is likely to pass the measure, but it's expected to be vetoed by Trump.
Trump vetoed an identical measure in March, and the White House promises he will veto this one, too.
Senators had new information as they cast their votes Wednesday, although it didn't change the result.
The latest vote followed the release of a list of 127 military construction projects totaling $3.6 billion that will be canceled in order to pay for the border wall.
That list was released this month, and senators have a list of the specific projects in their states that are being scrapped to free up funding for Trump's wall. That dynamic created new pressure for Republican senators, especially those up for re-election in 2020, to weigh their allegiance to Trump and the border wall against their support for projects at military bases and installations back home.
"If Republicans choose to stand with President Trump, they'll be saying they fully support allowing the president to take money from our military to fund a border wall," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said ahead of the vote.
Such arguments failed to sway senators who voted for Trump's emergency declaration the first time around, and no one changed his vote Wednesday.
"How would I square voting differently?" Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said to reporters Tuesday. Cornyn is up for re-election, and his state is losing some $38.5 million in funds for projects in El Paso and San Antonio.
Cornyn declared such concerns "way too parochial" and expressed confidence that the money for the Texas projects would ultimately be restored, even though Democrats have insisted they will not go along with that plan.
"There won't be any net loss in my opinion," he said.
Under an obscure law, the White House has said that declaring a national emergency at the border allows the president to take money from military construction projects already approved by Congress and spend it on his wall instead. Democrats and some Republicans have tried to block him, without success.
Trump issued the emergency declaration in February after a 35-day partial government shutdown that occurred because Congress refused to give him all the money he wanted for the wall.
The law allows Democrats to force repeated votes aimed at overturning the national emergency declaration through disapproval resolutions that can pass with a simple majority vote.
In March, 59 senators, including 12 Republicans, voted to overturn the national emergency declaration, while 41 senators voted to uphold it.
The vote total in favor of the disapproval resolution was lower on Wednesday because five senators were absent, including some Democrats who are campaigning for president and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who had voted with Democrats the first time around.
Rubio's spokesman Dan Holler said the senator was absent because of a long-standing family commitment but would have voted as he did before to overturn Trump's emergency declaration.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday that many problems could be solved if Democrats would approve more money for the military projects instead of forcing a "show vote" on the border wall.
"It's a false choice of Democrats' own invention," McConnell said. "The only reason there could be any trade-off between border security and these other priorities is their refusal to support common-sense border security."
In a news release, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee attacked Republicans who voted with the president, accusing them of "dismissing dire warnings from the Pentagon ... while doubling down on their craven support for this reckless cash grab."
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press; and by Erica Werner and Aaron Gregg of The Washington Post.
A Section on 09/26/2019