Cotton is exactly right. President Trump followed the law in declaring an emergency. The fact that this particular emergency declaration was selected at a time when the Border Patrol and ICE agents are overwhelmed and some federal judges are carrying out lawfare against current immigration policies, makes this seem less than sincere. If their issue is with the emergency declaration process then they should have voted to change the process. If they wanted to prevent Emergency Declarations from being used to move funds from one appropriation account to another, they could have. But they elected to target precisely one emergency declaration of the 31 ( or 28 or 32) currently in effect.
Executive Power
- Thread starter twenty02
- Start date
The emergency act was designed for the president to do something when there was not time to wait on congress. It was not designed to do something that congress has expressly voted down. But it as mashnut says, everyone with half a brain or more knows global warming is an emergency. Just wait.
Tom Cotton: "The U.S. Has 32 active national emergencies. They include: Election fraud in Belarus, Threats to the rule of law in Lebanon, A failed coup in Burundi. Yet Democrats claim the crisis on our border doesn't count."
If this is attacked from the stand point of “they voted it down”. Isn’t the counter argument, they didn’t vote it down they actually appropriated 3 billion $ ( or however much it was) to it?
It seems to me, by them allocating 1$ to it is enough to show they agree there is some level of need.
I'd love to hear from those who are all about "legislative intent" when interpreting how laws are to be applied.
Trump is perverting the legislative intent of both the proper use of his authority under the emergencies statute and the legislative intent of the appropriations legislation regarding border security and Wall.
From a personal standpoint, I wish he would not have declared a national emergency. I think he should have vetoed the legislation. But, the Democrats saying it is lawless is wrong. Let's be honest, this is exactly one thing. It is intended as a personal rebuke of a president by people who don't like him and font care very much for the people who support him.
You are right, a veto would have been the right and aboveboard thing to do.
He and his advisors decided not to go that route, why?
Obama used executive powers because Mitch essentially told him that was the only option available to him. When he did exercise that option there were court battles and and a lot of vicious Rush (et al) noise.
There is nothing personal going on here.
Congress sued the Obama administration for unauthorized spending and won the suit. The courts will probably also decide Trump's wall spending. We can at least be thankful that lawyers and judges can argue and decide these issues without name-calling and insults. It would be nice if POTUS and Congress would do likewise, but I think we have crossed that Rubicon.
I agree, thankfulness is the least of my response when issues are decided by the few, the chosen and unelected. The name calling,lies and just general bullsh$t that passes for political discourse is a damned shame. It is a simple truth though, we can only use the tools that are available to us.
I had to look up "crossing the Rubicon", civil unrest does seem to be the next logical step, I hope we are both wrong ( overly dramatic? eh.. prolly ).
