Democrats and Republicans alike have been piling onto Donald Trump about his imaginary border wall. Every morning the president gets up and tweets about it using threats, criticisms, and out-and-out attacks to manipulate the lawmakers into giving him what he wants. How likely are the Republican senators to vote to block the president’s fake national emergency declaration?
Another member of the Republican party has announced that he will vote against POTUS’Â declaration. Utah’s freshman senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney joined the cast of GOP renegades. He claimed it was to protect the Constitution. After all, the Constitution guarantees the separation of powers, which Trump stomped all over.
The Utah senator released a statement indicating his intentions, according to CNN:
‘This is a vote for the Constitution and for the balance of powers that is at its core. For the Executive Branch to override a law passed by Congress would make it the ultimate power rather than a balancing power.’
Thus far, there is a minimum of five additional Republican senators who intend to vote the same way. However, Trump has promised to veto the bill if it passes. Still, that would look bad for the president.
Romney ran against Trump in the 2015 Republican primaries. He noted in his announcement that should this president succeed in taking power from the House, the next president and one of another party could do that, too, and more.
The Utah senator noted that he was “seriously concerned that overreach by the Executive Branch is an invitation to further expansion and abuse by future presidents:”
‘We experienced a similar erosion of congressional authority with President Obama’s unilateral immigration orders — which I strenuously opposed. In the case before us now, where Congress has enacted specific policy, to consent to an emergency declaration would be both inconsistent with my beliefs and contrary to my oath to defend the Constitution.’
Romney emphasized that his vote was “not a vote against border security:”
‘In fact, I agree that a physical barrier is urgently needed to help ease the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, and the administration already has $4.5 billion available within existing authority to fund a barrier — even without an emergency declaration.’
The commander-in-chief shut the government down for 35 days, beginning a few days before Christmas in order to force the House to give him funding for his wall. That failed abysmally. Trump’s next ploy was to declare a national emergency. That would have provided him with the legal ability to move funds around and assign the military to actually construct his wall.
Senate Republicans floated the idea of modifying the National Emergencies Act in order to stave off Trump’s power grab. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that she would block any efforts to reform the act.
Pelosi said, according to The Washington Examiner:
‘Republican Senators are proposing new legislation to allow the president to violate the Constitution just this once in order to give themselves cover. The House will not take up this legislation to give President Trump a pass.’
