Thanks for your informed assessment.
In your view, could DoD go to the Corps of Engineers with some MILCON funding codes, and request some (or many) segments of border barrier, built to DHS specs, if the President said so?
I realize that is more of a funding than construction question, but what do you think?
First let me explain something that the average person is not aware of about congressional authorizations. They are for specific items.
Let’s say you are awarded a Design and Build Contract for a B-52 Maintenance Hanger Complex consisting of two Hangers of 66,800 square feet total.
If by accident you design and build your hangers and in the middle of construction someone points out that the hangers total 66,900 square feet. You will be asked to make the hangers each have 50 square feet that are unusable and inaccessible because to complete them otherwise you are exceeding the congressional authorization. A few square feet less to fit on the property for good and valid engineering or safety concerns: that’s okay, but to exceed the authorization arbitrarily, that would be outside the authorization.
Now you can use maintenance funds for maintenance almost anywhere. But those have budgets and set limits and they don’t get used to build something “not maintenance” character.
If you have a prior congressionally authorized area where a high steel bollard wall is authorized to be built by Congress and in an appropriation the money is released, if you are a proactive President you can release that contract and in three months be getting that underway. If you are Trump you can do it in three days, which is what happened here.
Now if the rag-tag marching band of immigrants that are in the news are really marshaled together by CNN and Soros and get to approaching the border, and there they start tearing down fence, the Corps of Engineers could be tasked with putting up an emergency barrier of any sort they have available and it could be of a pretty good size but not 300 miles long. Once underway, the Executive Branch or the President through channels would need to report such emergency work and explain if this was done under the War Power’s provisions or how and ask for the replacement of the money to whatever fund hat-in-hand.
In our Constitution, the lower house of the Congress is the sole authorized source of funding and taxing. Additional approvals happen in the Senate and then in bill signing or an over-ride.
Now, during a Declaration of War, authorizations are written with very broad sweeping descriptions. You might have an authorization to build Airfields and Related Structures and Barracks for Aircraft access the United States Western Mountain Ranges. Then you could build eight facilities or ten if such was unspecified.