Led by Senator Murray, the Stopping Executive Overreach on Military Appropriations Act
comes on the heels of Senate Democrats’ efforts to put a necessary
check on President Trump’s massive executive overreach that undermines
national security and the rule of law
Also sponsored by Senators
Schumer, Durbin, Leahy, and Schatz, the bill would prohibit the use of
defense money to build President Trump’s vanity border wall, and would
return the $3.6 billion that he has already stolen back to the military
construction projects for which they were originally appropriated
In response to Trump’s phony
national emergency declaration to circumvent Congress, the bill would
require Congressional approval before the president could repurpose
military construction funding
ICYMI:
Senator Murray blasts “egregious abuse of power” as President Trump
diverts money from vital national security projects to fund wasteful
border wall
Senator Murray:
“The President’s decision to use a phony emergency declaration to take
money away from our servicemembers and their families is a gross abuse
of executive power that hurts military families in my state and others,
and puts our nation’s security at risk”
(Washington, D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator
Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations
Committee, including the subcommittee with purview over military
construction spending, along with Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Dick
Durbin (D-IL), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Brian Schatz (D-HI), announced
the Stopping Executive Overreach on Military Appropriations Act (SEOMA) in
response to President Trump’s raid of military construction funds in
order to build his wasteful wall on the southern U.S. border. The bill
would rescind President Trump’s egregious abuse of executive power and
prevent future presidents from exercising similar executive overreach in
the event of a declaration of a national emergency.
“The President’s decision to use a phony
emergency declaration to take money away from our servicemembers and
their families is a gross abuse of executive power that hurts military
families in my state and others, and puts our nation’s security at
risk,” said Senator Murray. “We’re taking action to
not only reverse President Trump’s reckless decision to ransack funds
for critical military priorities and infrastructure projects that help
keep our country safe, such as the pier and maintenance facility at
Naval Base Kitsap in my home state of Washington, but also to make sure
no President going forward can take reckless, harmful steps like this
one.”
Specifically, the legislation would
directly address President Trump’s egregious abuse of executive
power—and set a standard to prevent future abuses of executive power—by:
- Requiring approval from Congress before the President can redirect military construction funds during a national emergency;
- Prohibiting defense money from being used to build President Trump’s wasteful border wall;
- Immediately rescinding the $3.6 billion dollars President Trump raided from military construction funds to divert to his wall, and returning those funds back to their respective projects; and
- Directing the Office of Government Ethics to review all current and future contracts related to President Trump’s border wall to determine if the President, his family, or his top lieutenants would personally profit from such contracts, or if there is any conflict of interest.
Senator Murray has been a vocal opponent of
President Trump’s repeated attempts to use federal taxpayer dollars to
fund his border wall, introducing a bill in February to prevent the president from taking future action to raid federal coffers to fund his border wall, and repeatedly condemning his most recent move to ransack military construction project funding. Following President Trump’s sham emergency declaration
at the southern border in February, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
announced that $3.6 billion dollars of appropriated military
construction funds would be diverted to pay for the President’s border
wall. This decision affects 127 military construction projects in 26
states and territories, including a nearly $89 million project
to construct a critical pier and maintenance facility at Naval Base
Kitsap in Washington state, and comes after Congress opted repeatedly,
on a bipartisan basis, not to fund President Trump’s request for his
border wall.
Text of the legislation can be found HERE.
A fact sheet on the bill can be found HERE.
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