Lawmakers oppose border wall funding near Arizona bombing range

A group of lawmakers is opposing a proposal to use Department of Defense funds to build border wall barriers along the Barry M. Goldwater Range in Arizona.

Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) maintain assessing further upgrades of the Range’s fencing would be a wasteful and unjustified expenditure, serving to take away from more important priorities, such as military readiness and lethality.

The legislators recently forwarded correspondence to Secretary of Defense James Mattis regarding the matter.

“We believe the Department of Defense lacks any authorization or appropriations needed to move this project into any stage of construction during fiscal year 2019,” the senators wrote. “Lacking this authorization for such a project, and in light of the Department’s understanding that such a project would be controversial, the planned expenditures would be better focused on meeting the readiness and lethality needs that you requested Congress to support in your budget request. This would preserve the Department’s promise to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars and our congressional oversight responsibility.”

The legislators said the Navy recently initiated studies on building more than 31 miles of barriers along the Range, despite an inability to provide congressional oversight committees with a clear justification or a compelling argument for diverting as much as $450 million in future funding to the project.