After the declaration of national emergency by President Donald Trump acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said Sunday would be studying which projects military money to be retrieved to fund construction of US-Mexico border wall.
According to Trump administration the wall will be funded from military narcotics and military construction funding of $2.5 billion and $3.6 billion respectively.
However, Shanahan to have a final say how much fund will be diverted and from which projects of military.
It is learned he may approve the $3.6 billion figure from military construction funding.
Briefing to the reporters he said, “I think I have a lot of discretion… You can trust the numbers in terms of the potential. Then you gotta marry it up with where the money would be spent.”
Shanahan added that funding of military housing will not be shifted for the wall purpose.
The service secretaries will be briefing about these in details in couple of days to know which money can be shifted and what will be the next planning for the affected programs.
Defense official said, “The joint staff is determining which barriers should be prioritized along the southwest border from a military perspective analysis.”
Shanahan added, “I’ll go in and review that analysis now that the emergency has been declared… Based on that, we can do an assessment of what would be appropriate.”
