Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for his border wall. Instead, Puerto Rico is paying for it. And Guam, New York, New Mexico, Utah, North Carolina … along with troops stationed overseas at facilities around the world. The Department of Defense released a list of 127 military construction projects being “delayed” to move their money into wall-building, and Puerto Rico will be losing $400 million for 10 planned projects.
You know, Puerto Rico, which Trump so conspicuously doesn’t think is really part of the United States, and where the island of Culebra was only connected to the main electrical grid in March 2019, and power outages remain common. And one of the projects that’s losing its funding to the wall is a power substation. According to a Defense official, the Puerto Rico projects weren’t starting until September 2020 anyway, and, “We don't see ourselves delaying those projects. We're fully committed to that recovery.” Uh huh. Sure you are.
Other projects losing money include an engineering center at West Point Academy, an operations center at Holloman Air Force Base, an elementary school at an installation in Germany, and much, much more.
Now the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are launching the campaign to force Congress to appropriate the money for these military constructions it already appropriated money for. Look forward to guilt-tripping and attacks about congressional Democrats refusing to fund power substations in Puerto Rico and elementary schools for military kids in Germany when they balk at going back and making it all okay that Trump stole the already-appropriated money and redirected it to the wall.
Published with permission from Daily Kos.
