SC misses out on millions returned to state projects raided to fund Trump border wall
When the Pentagon raided $10.75 million from funds designated to rebuild a fire station for a South Carolina military community to help build President Donald Trump’s border wall, Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation said they had already received assurance they’d get the money back.
This week, the Laurel Bay fire station at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort was not among the projects flagged for reinstatement of funds.
According to an April 27 memo obtained by McClatchy, Defense Secretary Mark Esper is instructing the Pentagon to restore $545.5 million to 22 of the domestic military base construction projects that had been put on hold last fall to pay for construction of the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In the memo, Esper said the Pentagon had determined wall money could instead come from funding cuts to overseas bases.
Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood said the overseas projects that lost funding “have not been cancelled but deferred because the projects will not be awarded until FY 2021 or later.”
There was not a response immediately available on how some domestic projects were restored and others were not.
According to a report obtained by The State newspaper that Deputy Assistant Navy Secretary James Balocki sent to Congress in October 2018, the need for a new fire station at Laurel Bay — the community that houses the families of servicemembers stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort — is dire.
An updated facility is crucial, said the Navy, to adequately serve 1,282 housing units, three schools, three family community centers, a child development center, a youth center, a shopping complex, a gas station and “several administrative, maintenance and support facilities.”
The existing fire station was built in 1959 as a chlorine injection station for the ground water wells to produce safe drinking water. “Minor repairs” have been made to the fire station over the last 50 years, according to the report, “but the facility has reached the end of its life expectancy.”
The current facility, the report says, “does not meet the minimum (Defense Department) facility size requirements” and is “not configured efficiently to respond to emergencies.”
When the timeline for completion of Laurel Bay project was first put into question in Sept. 2019, Republican members of the S.C. congressional delegation said they weren’t worried.
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott said last year he received personal assurances from then-acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, a former S.C. GOP congressman, that a new fire station planned for Laurel Bay — the community for families of service members stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort — would still be completed on schedule.
Mulvaney has since left the White House to be the administration’s special envoy to Northern Ireland.
U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, a senior Republican on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, told The State at the time he’d received a personal phone call from then-Navy Secretary Richard Spencer to assure him the “start date has been delayed but the complete date is on schedule.”
Spencer has also since left the Trump administration.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is close with Trump, also said he had spoken with the Pentagon and was confident “we’ll find a way to get the fire station,” but said a possible delay in completion was necessary to allow Trump to build the border wall.
On Wednesday, Graham’s spokesman, Kevin Bishop, said the senator “continues to work and we are confident the funding for Laurel Bay will be approved in the future.”
Spokesmen for Scott and Wilson did not immediately respond to request for comment on Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham, the South Carolina Democrat who represents the congressional district that includes the Beaufort base, called the decision to raid U.S. military construction project funding “unacceptable” and a circumvention of congressional authority.
“The Administration should use the nearly $2 billion wall funding they still have not spent to restore critical projects like the Laurel Bay Fire Station in Beaufort, and then we can discuss additional border funding in future legislation,” Cunningham said in a statement.
Last September, Esper identified 34 domestic US military construction projects and many more overseas projects that would lose their funding in order to shift a total of $3.6 billion to pay for construction on the border wall.
At the time, the Pentagon said funding could be backfilled by Congress in future defense bills, but congressional Democrats said they would not allow that to take place.
“We will not give the President a blank check by backfilling the military construction projects he has canceled to pay for the border wall,” two senior Democrats on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee said in a statement.”
Bishop said Wednesday that Graham believed “this problem would go away quickly if Democrats, particularly the House leadership, were not opposed to funding border security.”
Meanwhile, Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, suggested Democrats and Republicans weren’t the ones whose ability to cooperate could suffer as a result of this controversy.
Beyond hampering funds for much-needed initiatives, Eaglen said the Pentagon’s actions to override Congress and strip funding from military construction projects that lawmakers had previously agreed upon could do long-term damage to the working relationship between the two institutions.
”It surely diminishes trust by Congress in Pentagon leadership, which was already waning over a variety of concerns this past year,” she said.
In the meantime, Esper is saying the need to prioritize border wall construction remains high.
The commanding general of U.S. Northern Command also said this month an additional 540 troops would be dispatched to operate 60 mobile surveillance sites along the border wall in an effort to “seal off” any potential crossings by migrants who may be carrying the coronavirus.
Total per-month apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped steadily over the last six months, from 35,407 in October 2019 to 29,953 in March 2020, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics.
This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 1:14 PM with the headline "SC misses out on millions returned to state projects raided to fund Trump border wall."
