Wall fight looms as lawmakers negotiate defense policy bill

House and Senate lawmakers today began negotiations over the fiscal year 2020 defense authorization bill amid concern that partisan disagreements over funding for President Trump's border wall could stall the bill or even derail it for the first time in nearly six decades.

According to several congressional staffers, a possibility has emerged that the authorization bill could sidestep most of the wall funding issue and leave it to congressional appropriators.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) said at a press conference today lawmakers have not decided whether they will pursue that line of argument during the closed negotiations.

"The bills are very similar, except for where they're different and that's what we're going to get together and talk about," he said. "We are not going to tell you how we're going to have an outcome here at this press conference, in part, because we don't know what that outcome is yet."

At issue is $6.1 billion in military funding Trump has ordered the Pentagon use to construct a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon deferred $3.6 billion from 127 military construction projects so the funds could be diverted to the wall without congressional approval. That was in addition to $2.5 billion the Pentagon reprogrammed from other priorities towards the wall, also without the consent of Congress.

The GOP-led Senate's version of the defense authorization bill would "backfill" the money, while the Democrat-led House bill would not.

Smith, however, has argued that at least the backfill for the $3.6 billion in wall funding does not need to be addressed in this version of the defense authorization bill because the military construction account from which the funds were diverted authorizes money for a period of five years.

"The authorizations are still valid," a staffer said. "Therefore, no action is in the [bill] to reauthorize the projects. The backfill question is really one for the appropriations committee."

It remains unclear if the GOP and White House will see it that way.

Meanwhile, Senate appropriators are stalled over the same issue in their defense spending bill.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said the committee would work toward consensus on the issues where there is bipartisan disagreement. Aside from the wall funding, key differences are the House's proposals to block funding to deploy a low-yield, submarine-based nuclear warhead and to restrict Trump's authority to wage war on Iran.

"That's why we're having this meeting," Inhofe said. "We're deciding these things. We're not deciding it out here, we're going to decide it in there."