U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt said Congress might fight back against President Joe Biden’s decision to keep Space Command Headquarters in Colorado.
Last week, Biden chose to keep Space Command HQ in Colorado despite several studies indicating Huntsville as the No. 1 choice across the board.
Aderholt (R-Haleyville) told Alabama Public Television’s “Capitol Journal,” that Congress can use the power of the purse to push back against the decision.
“We’re going to be looking at, I think, different options,” Aderholt said. “I do think appropriations could be one avenue, and I say that because Space Command has to be built. There has to be a reason that we’re going to be funding this and the administration doesn’t have the money itself. It has to be done by the Congress allocating the money.”
Aderholt, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, thinks he might be able to get some support from other members of Congress on this issue.
“I’m hoping that they’ll be enough people in Congress that would say ‘we don’t want this to be a political decision, we want this to be done on the merits, and because of that we don’t want to be funding this facility.’ So the administration has got to come to Congress for the funding for this,” he said. “Now obviously the Alabama delegation in the overall scheme is a small delegation, but at the same time what rings true is the argument that we don’t want politics to be the deciding factors of where our military installations are going to do in this country.”
The congressman said the Colorado facility was always meant to just be a temporary place for the headquarters until a final decision was made.
“My understanding is it was only a temporary headquarters in Colorado, anyway,” he said. “It was always understood that it was going to move somewhere. Possibly it would stay in Colorado, but it was never designed to stay in Colorado. And that’s why this makes it so confusing is the fact that you would think that this argument would have been something that would have been taken into consideration before they ever did selection process.”
He also said this is just the latest example of partisan politics being inserted into national security decisions.
“That’s not how our military has ever operated, and quite honestly that’s not how I viewed how our federal agencies have ever operated,” he said. “But, unfortunately, we have seen it go down that path for the last several years.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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