Trump will 'sort of move money around' if Congress won't fund his border wall, Mick Mulvaney says

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Fox

published 10 February 2019

If congressional Democrats continue to refuse President Trump the $5.7 billion he demands for border wall construction, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on Fox News Sunday, Trump will find the money ... somewhere.

"[W]e'll take as much money as [Congress] can give us, and then we will go off and find the money someplace else — legally — in order to secure that southern barrier. But this is going to get built with or without Congress," Mulvaney told host Chris Wallace, who pressed for more specifics as to where, exactly, the money would come from, and whether obtaining it would require Trump to declare a national emergency. The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power of the purse.

"[T]here are other funds of money that are available to him through what we call 'reprogramming,' There is money that he can get at and is legally allowed to spend," Mulvaney replied. "There are certain things that every president must do in order to trigger the rights that he has to sort of move money around. ... He would prefer legislation because it's the right way to go and is the proper way to spend money in this country. But if that doesn't happen, the president proceeds."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.