NC bases lost millions to the border wall. The new budget doesn’t replace the money.
In its legislative sprint to the end of the year, Congress approved a $1.4 trillion spending package this week, one that included $738 billion for defense. The deal, signed by President Donald Trump on Friday night, averted a government shutdown and funds the government through the end of the 2020 fiscal year.
The package includes more than $584 million for specific military construction projects at four North Carolina installations — Camp Lejeune ($238 million), Cherry Point ($240.4 million), New River ($11.3 million) and Fort Bragg ($96.6 million). It includes another $1.18 billion for Hurricane Florence recovery, almost all of it at Camp Lejeune and New River.
The bipartisan spending deal, however, does not include money for projects that had their funding redirected to the border wall by Trump under his national emergency declaration. Democrats who control the House and who are against allowing Trump to move money to the border wall, balked at “backfilling” the previous projects and won that fight.
Of the more than $3.6 billion that was redirected to the wall, $80 million came from projects in North Carolina, including $40 million for a new battalion complex and ambulatory care center at Camp Lejeune, $6.4 million for a storage facility for the new KC-46 tanker at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and $32.9 million for a previously canceled elementary school at Fort Bragg. The ambulatory care center was to replace current facilities that are “substandard, inefficient, decentralized and uncontrolled,” according to the military.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who flipped his position to support Trump’s emergency declaration, is facing criticism over the unfunded projects from one Democratic challenger in his 2020 re-election bid.
Tillis and fellow North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr were among the 81 senators to vote for the spending package this week even without the funding.
“This legislation is a major win for North Carolinians, especially our service members, military families, and veterans. I’m proud of the billions of dollars we secured to upgrade North Carolina’s military installations and provide desperately-needed funding for Camp Lejeune to recover from the damage caused by Hurricane Florence,” Tillis said in a news release touting the funds for North Carolina.
Democrat Cal Cunningham, among the front-runners for the nomination to oppose Tillis and backed by national Democrats, said Tillis’ vote is a broken promise. Cunningham served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“When Thom Tillis voted three times to back the White House’s sham national emergency, including twice after he knew it would take $80 million from North Carolina military families, he sold off any ounce of independence he had left. Then, he promised those families the money would come, but we know now it won’t,” Cunningham said in a statement.
Tillis’s campaign replied that Cunningham’s fellow Democrats are to blame for not restoring the funding.
Border emergency
In a Washington Post editorial, published in February, Tillis explained why he would not support Trump’s emergency declaration even though he backed Trump’s vision on border security. He wrote he was defending the legislative branch’s powers and called out his party colleagues for hypocrisy on the issue of executive power.
“Republicans need to realize that this will lead inevitably to regret when a Democrat once again controls the White House, cites the precedent set by Trump, and declares his or her own national emergency to advance a policy that couldn’t gain congressional approval,” Tillis wrote in the editorial, which the Post this week named one of its favorites of 2019.
But weeks later, after criticism from conservatives, Tillis voted with Trump on the national emergency declaration. Trump endorsed Tillis’ re-election bid in June, saying in a tweet that Tillis “fights hard against Illegal Immigration.”
The measure has come up for two other votes, including a veto override in October, and Tillis has voted with Trump on both occasions. Tillis defended his position, said there was time to “re-allocate funding” and called out the news media and liberals for distorting the debate.
“None of the remaining projects are set to begin until 2020, which means Congress has plenty of time to re-allocate funding. I’ve taken action to do just that,” he wrote in an editorial for the Greensboro News & Record.
“If the projects are impacted, it will be because House Democrats play partisan politics.”
The Senate in June passed a National Defense Authorization Act that included backfill money. Tillis was among 86 yes votes. Senate Republicans again in September pushed for the money to be included.
“Senator Tillis has been clear that backfilling the money diverted from North Carolina to secure the border was always contingent on the Democrats honoring their word on the NDAA vote taken in June,” Tillis’ campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said in an emailed statement.
The end result of the legislative wrangling is the money was not included.
The spending deal approved this week includes $1.4 billion for new barriers at the border and would allow Trump to again reach into defense funds to fund the wall. Democrats won victories on other spending priorities in the bipartisan agreement.
Cunningham is one of five Democrats vying for the nomination, including state Sen. Erica Smith, Mecklenburg County Commissioner Trevor Fuller, Atul Goel of Raleigh and Steve Swenson of Bunnlevel. Tillis is one of four candidates for the GOP nomination, including Paul Wright, Sharon Hudson and Larry Holmquist. Libertarian Party candidate Shannon Bray and Constitution Party candidate Kevin Hayes also filed for the race.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published December 21, 2019 at 9:00 AM.
