WASHINGTON -- Virginia's junior U.S. senator on Sunday accused the White House of concealing information from lawmakers in order to protect a presidential veto.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.. noted on CBS' Face the Nation that President Donald Trump wants to divert funding from military construction projects to build his promised wall on the southern U.S. border, but a list of those projects has not been released.
"This is the White House wanting to hold the list back because they worry that if senators and House members saw the potential projects that were going to be ransacked to pay for the president's wall, they would lose votes," Kaine said.
Senators have worried that using an executive order to shift defense spending to other purposes would essentially put an indefinite spigot on the department's military construction account.
Patrick Shanahan, the interim Pentagon chief, told senators at hearing on Thursday that he would provide the list of bases potentially affected later that day, but he didn't.
Shanahan and David Norquist, the budget chief for the U.S. Department of Defense, said no projects contracted for this year will be touched, but those without contracts could be vulnerable. Both men said that in any case, money for family housing projects would not be touched.
Kaine said Thursday that senators had asked for a list of affected bases and projects for weeks, but military service leaders had told them they needed Shanahan's permission.
"There has not been a deliberate attempt to withhold information to this committee," Shanahan said Thursday.
Trump issued his first veto a day later on a congressional resolution that would block his declaration of a national emergency to shift $3.6 billion from Pentagon construction projects for the wall construction.
The president's proposed budget for fiscal 2020 would restore that money for military construction and provide an additional $3.6 billion "in case additional emergency funding is needed for the border," Shanahan said.
On Face the Nation, moderator Margaret Brennan told Kaine that he seemed "very clearly frustrated" with Shanahan during Thursday's hearing. Kaine agreed, saying he "kind of blew up at him."
"I have a child in the military, so I sent a letter on February 15th to the secretary of defense and said 'If you're going to ransack the Pentagon's budget, tell me what projects you're going to cut or delay or eliminate.' They wouldn't provide an answer," Kaine said. "At the hearing on Thursday, we're now going to vote that day on whether we support or reject the emergency declaration, and they still hadn't answered our question, 'What projects are at stake?'"
Kaine wanted to know what projects would be cut from the Pentagon's budget: "Is it going to be military housing? Is it going to be trying to make our bases safer from terrorism with construction projects? Is it going to be rebuilding Tyndall Air Force Base [in Panama City, Fla.] that got blitzed in the hurricanes last fall? And they said they would give us the list after."
"I think they're going to try to hide the list until that veto override vote occurs in the House and then in the Senate," Kaine added.
While votes for the resolution fell well short of the two-thirds support needed to overcome Trump's veto, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a March 26 vote.
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney questioned Kaine's comments, noting that the administration has assured Congress that no programs scheduled to start before the end of September are affected.
"There's no list of projects that are absolutely going to not be funded so that the wall can be," Mulvaney said on CBS, adding that if anyone would know of such a list, "it would be me."
"Does [Kaine] just think it because he wants it to be true, or someone told him there was actually a list? Because, again, I'm chief of staff," Mulvaney said. "I'm also still technically over at the Office of Management and Budget."
Mulvaney said the administration has only a list of construction projects that might have funds diverted. No such list has been released.
"I know of the universe of things that might be delayed or reduced or cut in a very extreme circumstance ... to fund the wall," Mulvaney said. "But a list of a decision that's already been made, saying 'this money is going to be cut and spent over there,' That's not been made yet."
Regardless, Mulvaney said, Trump's veto will stand.
"We fully expect the veto override to fail in the House," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Mark Niquette of Bloomberg News; and by Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press.
A Section on 03/18/2019