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Cocaine Mitch Lets Down the Side
As a skeptic of President Trump, this doesn’t surprise me:
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that President Trump will sign the homeland-security-spending bill pending before Congress while simultaneously declaring a national emergency in order to fund his long-promised border wall.
But this does:
McConnell also announced Thursday on the Senate floor that he supports Trump’s national-emergency declaration, breaking from a group of Senate conservatives critical of ceding more authority to the executive.
“I’ve just had an opportunity to speak with President Trump, and he would, I would say to all my colleagues, has indicated that he’s prepared to sign the bill,” McConell said. “He will also be issuing a national-emergency declaration at the same time. And I’ve indicated to him that I’m going to prepare — I’m going to support the national-emergency declaration. So for all of my colleagues, the president will sign the bill. We’ll be voting on it shortly.”
I was glad to see President Trump rescind the unconstitutional executive orders that President Obama enacted, but was worried that, since President Trump didn’t appear to have any well-defined principle recognizing Constitutional authority as a prerequisite for issuing EOs, when push came to shove he would do the same thing as his predecessor, when it was politically expedient. And now that has come to pass.
Now, I’m open to persuasion that the border situation constitutes an actual emergency, but not much open to it. While the southern border is a problem, not much has changed in 30 years in terms of the acuteness of the issue, as far as I can tell. It’s more of a chronic (in more ways that one!) issue that is not on the order of the types of emergencies that the emergency power is supposed to be for. As always, though, there’s usually much to be learned by going at it hammer and tongs here, so let’s squawk at each other about it for a while.
Published in Politics
IIRC, there are 13 or so national emergency declarations in effect today. Many of them relate to goings on in other countries (including Burkina Faso!), and are used to freeze assets in this country. Is that how you conceive the “order of the types of emergencies that the emergency power is supposed to be for”?
Congress gave POTUS this power through properly enacted legislation. It allows him to access areas of existing law that are in effect or can only be used during a declared national emergency. You can question whether the actual National Emergency Act and related laws are an unconstitutional delegation of power to the executive, but it is not unconstitutional for any POTUS to use the laws as they stand.
I agree wholeheartedly. This is reminiscent of Obama’s executive orders. The President proposes, and Congress disposes. We should have gotten the wall money back in the last Congress, but we didn’t do so.
There is a long history of the Court’s striking down Executive Orders. See the attached video from The Bulwark about the Supreme Court striking down Truman’s seizure of steel mills during the Korean War.
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@archiecampbell, you don’t see anything new about the caravans of invaders from Guatemala that would justify changing what we have allowed for the past 30+ years?
I have a hard time finding objections to such a declaration reasonable, given (as I just listed on another thread) that there have been 58 presidential declarations of national emergency since the 1976 law, by presidents from Carter through Trump. Topics range from anti-terrorism measures, to disease epidemics, to human rights and trafficking, to movement of goods or technologies, and many other subjects of a chronic ongoing nature. Evidently, a situation need not be acute or suddenly arising to constitute an emergency.
Every president since its enactment has used the law to declare one or more such emergencies. George W. Bush issued 13, Barack Obama 12.
The Brennan Justice Center publishes the list (available at https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/DeclaredNationalEmergenciesUndertheNationalEmergenciesAct_2.14.19.pdf )indicating that 31 remain in effect. The law provides Congress power to terminate a declared emergency, and they must be reviewed every 6 months in any case.
It’s been an emergency for decades. We have just been ignoring it.
That’s a good point, and is well-taken. I didn’t know the bit about using it to freeze assets, though I guess I could see a scenario in which POTUS would need to move fast to head-off money being transferred to bad actors in a foreign crisis. In this situation, though, it’s hard to see it as a crisis on par with what disasters these orders are traditionally used for. But stipulating for the sake of argument that he does have the latitude under the NEA and related laws, I still object strongly to using it to issue and EO for something that’s not a crisis in order to get around a budget impasse.
Corrections: 31, not 13. Burundi, not Burkina Faso.
Interesting. Suddenly a “Jim” McConnell comes in to argue with me. I’m on to you, Mitch!
Seriously, I want to say yes, as I am a pro-border security guy. But the current means of repelling the remnants of the caravans have worked thus far. And Trump is getting 1.36bn for the wall, but he wants 5bn. So I don’t see this as some sort of urgent, very time-sensitive crisis like a natural disaster that requires this sort of response. This is just a conflict over the budget.
I forgot to note to @danok1, that it would also be a good idea for Congress to revisit, refine, and amend the NEA and related laws. Congress doing its job, and more jealously protecting its turf would be a good thing.
You should review the list from the Brennan Center referenced above. These NE declarations have not traditionally been used for “disasters.” The only things I’d qualify as “disasters” are the one after 9/11, the one after Katrina, and the one for the 2009 flu pandemic. The rest are on the lines of “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contribut-ing to the Conflict in Côte d’Ivoire,” “Blocking Property of Persons Undermining the Sovereignty of Lebanon or Its Democratic Processes and Institutions,” “Blocking Property of Persons Undermining Dem-ocratic Processes or Institutions in Zimbabwe.”
A “national emergency” ain’t what it used to be.
Agreed. Maybe that’ll come out of this. (Narrator: It won’t.)
200,000 Americans killed by drugs from Mexico in the last few years. That is more than Pearl Harbor, 911, every natural disaster combined,… I guess nothing is an emergency for some people. Of course title 10 section 284 doesn’t require an emergency to build barriers.
The large majority of drugs come in through Ports of Entry. A massive wall won’t help that. I wouldn’t have a problem with increasing security at ports of entry. If memory serves, that is part of the new appropriation bill.
Would it help with the share that doesn’t come though a port of entry?
It would help there. Would it be cost-effective? I think not. We already have walls at the primary and secondary areas. What we are fighting over now are the tertiary areas.
Just because it is a crisis (i.e emergency) that has been ignored by multiple presidents doesn’t mean it isn’t an emergency now.
@garyrobbins:
FIFY
This is not an EO! He has the legal, and moral, authority to declare a national emergency. I see across the net there are 5,000,000 South Americans planning to head our way in the next 12 months. Five million! Why can’t the U.S. be allowed to control the borders against alien invaders? Disease, crime, welfare freeloaders, drugs—come on! If challenged in court, he should say, ‘they ruled; let THEM enforce it!’ When will enough be enough?_0
That’s a fact-free thing to say. I invite you to read the Executive Orders Trump has issued as president. You’ll find that the constitutional and statutory authority for the order is cited in the order.
For instance, Trump declared a national emergency on December 20, 2017, because:
The Executive Order (#13818) began with:
If we start seeing numbers of folks at the southern border gather in such numbers that they overwhelm our border agents there, then I’d of course be more sympathetic to a state of emergency, but that’s not happening now. And again, he’s getting 1.36bn for the wall, so it’s not as if there are no dollars for this in the compromise.
I don’t think it is; I think it’s just in the news more because the progs are trying to make it a “humanitarian crisis” issue. It’s good that it’s getting attention, though, don’t get me wrong.
This isn’t to say it’s not an issue, it’s just that it should be handled through the normal budgetary process.
31 not 13, actually. (Was that a typo on your end?)
And 3 of the current national emergencies were declared by Trump.
Anyone who thinks Trump can’t declare a national emergency is, sorry, a complete ignoramus. Now, it’s different to argue whether such and such is truly a national emergency. But to argue the president does not have the constitutional and statutory authority to issue a national emergency declaration is just mind-numbingly stupid.
Most recently, Trump renewed a 2007 declaration of national emergency, originally declared by Bush and renewed each year since, which states that it’s in the national interest of the United States to protect the national sovereignty of Lebanon. In other words, it’s perfectly fine for the president to protect the borders of Lebanon using a declaration of national emergency.
So, please, stop with the nonsense that the president cannot do the same for the borders of the United States.
legally speaking it would actually be an executive order, FYI.
ah.
I doubt it. More likely to me is that the large majority of the drugs seized by the border patrol are coming through the ports of entry.
It’s OK if you don’t think it’s an emergency, Archie. But you’re not the president. The president is the one who gets to determine if it’s an emergency.
We all know what the Dems will do with this precedent. 5 minutes after the next inauguration of a Democratic presidential, there will be an emergency declared over global warming.
Considering 31 of the still active Presidential Emergency declarations haven’t been challenged by Congress I have no interest in Congress or their opinions. Or whether or not Mitch is just trying to get Trump not to shut down the government again.
As far as a “legitimate” emergency Archie, consider how many tax dollars get spent daily on illegal immigration and how that impacts on our national debt. That might help you get beyond what our current President is up to. We all carry that tax burden long after Trump retires. And we pass it along to future generations.
Unless you think that to declare a national emergency, there must first be one. As the mind-numbingly stupid ignoramus, I naively thought that the POTUS maybe lacked Constitutional authority to declare an EO under NEA because this isn’t an actual national emergency, but danok1 pointed out the, er, statutory latitude that Congress has granted him. So now, given that it looks like he (probably) can, I’ll shift to arguing that even if he can do it, he shouldn’t, given that it’s not actually a national emergency, and that at some point, some POTUS is going to have to exercise some restraint. In Trump rescinding the overreaching EOs of Obama, I hoped (but doubted) he was sending a positive signal in that regard, but no dice.
It’s not nonsense. The POTUS is much more limited in dealing with foreign powers than with domestic ones. With foreign powers, to send a signal to its enemies that the borders of an ally should be secure, he can exercise diplomacy, and failing that, declare a national emergency, and then after that it’s pretty much send troops, and that last only for a limited time (theoretically.) He does not participate in governing foreign countries, but he is involved–and has Constitutional powers–to govern here. So the standards by which these things are assessed is a difference in kind, IMO. But I’ll stipulate here for the sake of argument that Constitutionally he’s in the clear. That still leaves us with the question of whether he
I know they’re in the same party, and Mitch doesn’t want to undercut the president, but shouldn’t Congress perhaps at least argue with him over whether this is the sort of thing that emergency power declaration was intended to cover?
The backlog of asylum seekers is 809,000, which is triple what it was a decade ago. The cartels, which control migration, are now instructing everyone how to claim asylum. We get 600K to 900K illegal immigrants/year. They agents are overwhelmed. The system is overwhelmed. The cartels are winning and Americans are losing.
Does that mean that an emergency is whatever the POTUS says it is? He’s not a dictator, after all. I think we need some sort of limiting definition or principle. As citizens, we should probably talk about what the limits should be, and maybe get our reps. to rein this in a bit.
Well if you saw it on the net, it must be true! Seriously, do you have any citation to back up your assertion?