Congress could prevent funds marked for military construction, including up to $91 million for projects at Creech and Nellis Air Force Bases, from being diverted to the border wall if it approves the Pentagon’s budget before the start of the next fiscal year.

But approving the budget before Oct. 1 could prove difficult without an agreement between Republicans, Democrats and Trump on overall defense and nondefense spending.

“If the Department’s [fiscal year] 2020 budget is enacted on time as requested, no military construction project used to source [border wall] projects would be delayed or cancelled,” the Department of Defense (DOD) said in a release this week, which included a list of projects that could be affected by Trump’s decision in February to declare a national emergency allowing him to divert $3.6 billion of previously appropriated military construction funds to build a wall on the Mexican border.

The office of Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is working with the relevant agencies to get information about exactly which projects are at risk as the list gets winnowed down.

“Our office continues to reach out to the Department of Defense and the National Guard to determine the exact funding at risk in Nevada,” Ryan King, spokesman for Cortez Masto, said in an email Tuesday. “The Senator continues to engage with relevant agencies to understand the specific impacts, though we have no further details to share at this time.”

Rep. Steven Horsford, whose 4th Congressional District includes both Creech and Nellis, said that airmen at the two bases are performing key security operations that should not be cut.

“Servicemembers at Nellis and Creech Air Force Bases are performing missions that are critical to our national security,” Horsford said Tuesday. “They deserve our admiration and support; not cuts to funding to maintain their training, readiness, and quality of life.”

“The President’s emergency declaration is a potentially unconstitutional attack on Nevada’s military families,” he continued. “I’ll continue working with my colleagues to ensure Nevada’s service members have the resources they need.”

Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget blueprint was released last week, which called for more than $700 billion in DOD spending. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is expected to send DOD a list of border projects that could be funded by military construction dollars as soon as this week.

The Pentagon's list is made up of projects that have not been awarded funds as of the end of last year. But not all projects on the list would be affected under DOD’s criteria, which rules out diverting funding from projects with award dates before Sept. 30, 2019.

On the list are two projects at Creech, as part of the fiscal 2019 budget, in support of the MQ-9 Reaper, a remotely piloted aircraft. One would receive $28 million for a new ground control station operations facility and another is designated to receive $31 million for an operations and command center facility.

At Nellis, $5.9 million was appropriated in the fiscal 2019 budget to build a new combat rescue helicopter simulator facility. Another $23 million, appropriated in fiscal 2018, to build a 42,000 square foot facility at the base is also on the list. Funding for a Nellis munitions maintenance facility for the F-35A fighter jet, $3.45 million appropriated in fiscal 2016, is also listed.

The list did not include $32 million for the National Guard readiness center in North Las Vegas, which was previously identified by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee.

The Pentagon release came after Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for a list of projects last week at a hearing on the DOD’s budget.

At the hearing Reed said that approving the DOD budget by the end of the fiscal year is unlikely unless Congress passes legislation to raise caps on spending imposed by a 2011 deficit-cutting law, known as the Budget Control Act (BCA), that would enact automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration, if Congress goes over the caps.

“There is bipartisan consensus that enforcing budget discipline through the BCA and sequestration is ineffective and shortsighted, and that the BCA caps for FY 2020 will deprive us of the resources needed to sufficiently meet the needs of our nation,” Reed said at the hearing.

In 2018, Congress passed a two-year reprieve from the caps, which ended with the fiscal year 2019 budget cycle. That reprieve allowed Congress to approve the Pentagon’s FY 2019 budget by mid September, ahead of the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year, which kept DOD funding uninterrupted by other fights over spending in other parts of the federal budget.

“I believe Congress should pass another two-year budget agreement to provide further relief from the caps and provide stability for budget planning,” Reed continued. “Without such an agreement, we will face great difficulty in crafting a bipartisan authorization bill and will be hard-pressed to provide the Defense Department with another on-time appropriation.”

Asked about how he will choose which projects not to immediately fund, Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he would be deliberative and seek to not reduce the military’s readiness.

“We’ll look carefully at the mission that our soldiers, sailors and marines, have been assigned, some airmen as well, and we’ll look at how these projects support directly the mission of those individuals,” Dunford said at the hearing.

However, ultimately DHS will make the final call, though Dunford will provide advice to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

“I will be one of the inputs,” Dunford said. “I’ll provide military advice to the secretary in the relationship between the resources, the projects and the mission.”

The list also comes after the House and Senate last week voted to block Trump’s emergency declaration. However, that spurred Trump to issue his first veto. It is unlikely that the Democratic-controlled House or GOP-run Senate will be able to muster the two-thirds vote required to overturn Trump's veto.

Nevertheless, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will hold a vote on the matter next week.