House Appropriations bill supports changing names of military bases, block border wall funding

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday began its markup of the 2021 defense policy bill that allocates $694.6 billion for Pentagon programs and hits on several hot-button topics such as border wall funding and renaming military bases that honor confederate leaders.

Democrats on Capitol Hill have launched a significant push to include language in the National Defense Authorization Act — which sets defense spending limits and policy for the upcoming year — to mandate the renaming of military bases and assets that are named after Confederate leaders.

Defense appropriators in the House have allocated $1 million in the defense policy bill to fund the process of renaming at least 10 military bases with names that honor leaders of the Confederacy such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Lee in Virginia.

According to a summary of the bill, the legislation aims to provide funds to rename “Army installations, facilities, roads, and streets named after Confederate leaders and officers.”

President Trump has threatened to veto legislation that would mandate the renaming of the military bases, but the move has seen increasing support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

A Republican-led Senate panel last month approved its version of the defense policy bill and included a provision to rename the bases within a period of three years. The language has seen some resistance from Democrats who have pushed to speed up the timeline, while some Republicans have vowed to resist efforts to rename bases and have argued the matter should be decided among local communities.

The House Appropriations bill also circles back to a polarizing political fight that last year threw the fate of the entire defense bill into uncertainty: funding for the southern border wall.

This year’s version would block additional military funds to construct the wall and would place a $1.9 billion limit on how much money the administration can shift within its budget.

The legislation seeks to prohibit funds to “construct a wall, fence, border barriers, or border security infrastructure along the southern land border of the United States.”

“The granting of additional budget flexibility to the Department is based on the presumption that a state of trust and comity exists between the legislative and executive branches regarding the proper use of appropriated funds,” the committee’s defense subpanel wrote in its report of the bill. “This presumption presently is false.”

The administration has repeatedly sought to divert billions from military construction accounts to fund the wall, but not without substantial pushback from Democrats.

While the issue is expected to see support from Democrats in both chambers, Republicans are set to strongly resist the issue and have criticized the bill for containing partisan policies.