WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, announced they are calling on the Department of Defense (DOD) to protect funding designated for New York military construction projects, at risk of being diverted to construct a border wall.
Recently Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan announced that the DOD will spend up to $1 billion to build 57 miles of wall at the border. With the DOD planning to eventually spend an additional $3.6 billion of military construction funds for the wall, this could put more than $300 million of federal funding allocated for New York projects at risk of being diverted.
In a letter to Shanahan, Schumer and Gillibrand expressed their alarm by the president’s attempt to cut military construction funds in order to construct “an expensive and unnecessary wall at the southern border” and called on the DOD to protect this funding.
In their letter they specified, much like Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney did recently, concern about funding for projects scheduled at West Point. Among them:
• $22 million for cemetery expansion
• $70 million for a new wastewater treatment plant
• $95 million for a new Engineering Center
• $65 million for a 450 vehicle parking structure.
