Kaine To Senate Republicans: ‘If You Won’t Stand Up For The Men And Women In Our Military, Who Will You Stand Up For?’

Watch the full floor speech here. 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine delivered a floor speech condemning the Trump Administration for taking $3.6 billion away from military construction projects, including $77,120,000 from projects in Virginia, to build portions of the border wall that the President promised Mexico would pay for. In his speech, Kaine highlighted examples of defunded projects across the country that will lose funding and called on Senate Republicans to oppose the Administration’s efforts to harm military families and strip military funding from their states.

“The President promised the American public as a candidate that he would build a border wall with Mexico and that Mexico would pay for any wall he would build.   The President has broken his promise.   And it shocks me that, as Commander in Chief, he now insists that it’s gotta be our troops, and our military families, and our nation’s security that have to be sacrificed for his foolishness,” Kaine said in his speech.

“I don’t believe the President cares about solving the border security issue.    The substance of it means nothing to him or he would have embraced a deal that gave him every penny he asked for in February of 2018.   He could have had a deal a long time ago if this mattered to him.    What the President cares about is big campaign rallies with people chanting ‘Build a Wall’ so he can continue to stoke his political machine,” Kaine continued.

“Will the Senate Majority say a word?   Raise an objection?  Show support for the military?   Show that Congress sets the budget and appropriations, not the executive?  Make clear that no President – not this President, or any President – should be able to move money around at will to support a blatantly political agenda at the expense of critical defense priorities? That is what we will be voting on soon.   And I urge my colleagues to reject the President’s foolish and dangerous raid on our military,” Kaine concluded.

Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been outspoken against President Trump’s plan to pull money from military construction projects to build his border wall since it was initially announced earlier this year. Last week, Kaine criticized the Trump Administration for pulling funding from projects in Virginia to secure fire protections for Navy ship maintenance workers, ensure the safe storage of hazardous chemicals in Norfolk and Portsmouth, and construct a new SCIF for the Cyber Ops facility at Joint Base Langley-Eustis.

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