The real national emergency
By
President Donald Trump will sign spending legislation to prevent a government shutdown while declaring a national emergency to try to build his proposed border wall, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday.
“He’s prepared to sign the bill, he will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time,” the Kentucky Republican said as the chamber prepared to vote on a measure to keep the government open past a midnight Friday deadline.
If Trump follows through, lawmakers and the White House would dodge their second partial shutdown since December, sparing about 800,000 federal workers from more financial pain. But the emergency declaration would quickly spark lawsuits challenging the president’s authority, creating yet another fight over his key campaign promise.
The emergency declaration would allow Trump to redirect funds from other parts of the government to the project without congressional approval. The move could in part assuage conservative critics who argued the president should not accept the latest congressional plan, which denied him the funding he demanded for the border barrier. He had threatened the action for weeks, splitting the GOP caucus as some Republicans argued it would set a dangerous precedent.
As always with Trump, there’s an enormously powerful urge on the part of the elites, the media, the media elites, etc., to minimize what this is. What it is is an attempt to ignore any legal restraints on presidential power.
The claim that the current situation on the Mexican border is the kind of genuine emergency that could possibly justify spending — in the face of explicit Congressional refusal to appropriate such funds — billions of dollars already appropriated for other purposes to address it is farcical. What to do about border security is a decades-long debate, that has been answered explicitly via the legislative process as recently as two days ago. Subverting that process in this way is no different than a president declaring that the contemplated shortfall in social security payroll tax revenues a dozen years from now means he can declare a “fiscal emergency,” ignore a just-enacted legislative compromise on that precise issue, and take money earmarked for other purposes to pay for social security benefits.
It’s the kind of thing that isn’t explicitly forbidden, in other words, because nobody would have imagined that any president would be shameless enough to make such an absurd argument.
This is a very dangerous moment.