Will John Cornyn Finally Stand up and Just Say “No” to Stealing Funds from the Military and Drug Interdiction?
A new joint investigative piece from Texas Tribune and ProPublica, “Records show Trump’s border wall is costing taxpayers billions more than initial contracts,” highlights that American taxpayers’ bill for Donald Trump’s border wall are several billion dollars higher than previously anticipated and continue to come from raided military budgets. As the report notes:
“A ProPublica/Texas Tribune review of federal spending data shows more than 200 contract modifications, at times awarded within just weeks or months after the original contracts, have increased the cost of the border wall project by billions of dollars since late 2017. This is particularly true this year, in the run-up to next week’s election. The cost of supplemental agreements and change orders alone — at least $2.9 billion — represents about a quarter of all the money awarded and more than what Congress originally appropriated for wall construction in each of the last three years.”
The news underscores why the border wall remains the perfect encapsulation of Trump’s presidency – corrupt, mendacious, racist, and failing – and offers another opportunity for Texas Senator John Cornyn to actually speak out in public about his supposed opposition to raiding wall money from military budgets and having American taxpayers foot the bill (wasn’t Mexico going to pay for it, per Trump rally claims?).
In a recent editorial board interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Senator Cornyn portrayed himself as an opponent – in private – of President Trump’s raid of billions of dollars appropriated by Congress for the military that Trump seized and put toward the border wall using the phony pretext of a national emergency declaration. This despite the fact that Cornyn’s actual voting record shows support for Trump’s wall and its raid of military budgets. In September 2019, 12 Senate Republicans voted against Trump‘s emergency declaration, but Senator Cornyn was not among them. Instead, he sided with Trump and voted against the joint resolution condemning the “emergency.” Cornyn also delivered a series of public statements in support of Trump’s wall money grab (see here).
According to Mario Carrillo, Texas-based Campaigns Manager for America’s Voice:
“We need forceful, stand-up leadership in Texas not the fearful whispers of John Cornyn who is afraid to fight for Texas. Cornyn is the second most powerful person in the majority party in the United States Senate, yet can’t put that power to work for his own state. It seems awfully convenient that Sen. Cornyn tells us that he’s privately expressed opposition to Trump’s border wall, but meanwhile, has done nothing to actually stop the raiding of military budgets or continued forceful taking of Texans’ land to build a wall most of us don’t want. But it’s not surprising that during his most difficult reelection campaign, Sen. Cornyn would want to seem like he’s actually standing up for Texans, when we know in reality, he’s been a serial enabler of Trump’s worst on immigration.
“Texans deserve elected officials who will stand up for them, and not only in private. Donald Trump has used our state to carry out his anti-immigrant agenda, including the cruel family separation policy. And we’ve had enough.”
