March 14, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the Senate to reject a resolution disapproving of President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration on the southern border:
“Congress has never voted to overturn a national emergency in 43 years with more than 50 emergencies, even when the ‘national’ emergencies were problems overseas. Only now is it acting in an instance where the problems are here in the U.S. It does not care about the discretion it granted to the President or it would have acted to rescind these authorities long ago. And it is true this wouldn’t be necessary if Congress would do its job and secure the border. Having a Congress that refuses to defend this country is an emergency, and President Trump has done the right thing within the limited powers that Congress has granted, to secure the border.
“Congress has every power to delegate limited fiscal reprogramming authority to the President, in this case to utilize uncommitted military construction funds to address the national emergency and humanitarian crisis on the southern border with drugs, gangs and human trafficking continuing to press on the southern border. Yet, members of the U.S. Senate are acting like Congress never passed such a law. If the question is hypothetically, absent Congressional authorization, can the President just spend however much money he wants, of course, the answer is no, under the Constitution it is Congress that must first act.
“Well, it has. Congress passed the National Emergencies Act and it is perfectly constitutional, and is no different than Congress’ authority to appropriate huge sums of money for broad purposes, leaving it to departments and agencies to determine how best to meet those goals via the contracting process. It is no different than the limited transfer authority Congress grants agencies every fiscal year. To pretend that this bit of discretion is different from all the other discretions it has granted is disingenuous at best.”
Attachments:
“Senate to pass meaningless resolution blocking Trump from building wall that Trump will just veto,” By Robert Romano, March 6, 2019 at http://dailytorch.com/2019/03/senate-gop-to-pass-meaningless-resolution-blocking-trump-from-building-wall-that-trump-will-just-veto/
“If Congressional GOP votes to overturn national emergency declaration to build wall, they will prove President Trump is right about the swamp,” By Robert Romano, Feb. 22, 2019 at http://dailytorch.com/2019/02/if-congressional-gop-votes-to-overturn-national-emergency-declaration-to-build-wall-they-will-prove-president-trump-is-right-about-the-swamp/
Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview.
###