[V]ermont’s representatives in Washington all had the same thing to say about President Donald Trump’s announcement of a state of emergency Friday — there isn’t one.
The president’s declaration would allow him to spend billions on building a wall at the border, bypassing Congress after it voted Thursday for a negotiated budget that did not include Trump’s requested funding for border security. But the declaration came with an overwhelming amount of opposition, almost immediately after it was made.
“There is no national emergency. No one who subscribes to reality can claim otherwise,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement. “Crossings are historically down, billions (of dollars) are being spent on border security, and Congress yesterday appropriated still more. President Trump simply failed to get a deal to build his wasteful vanity wall.”
Many Democrats and some Republicans in Congress have said the declaration is unconstitutional, and Democrats in the House are planning to introduce legislation blocking the decision. The emergency declaration also faces legal challenges.
“Yesterday, Congress resoundingly rejected President Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall on the border. Today, he manufactured a national emergency out of whole cloth to bypass Congress and fund this discredited and now defeated plan,” Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said in a statement. “The president’s utter failure to deliver on a phony campaign promise may be a political emergency for him, but it is not an emergency for the nation under the law or the Constitution. This willful and dangerous action will not withstand scrutiny in the courts. The wall will not be built.”
After making the announcement, Trump said he “didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”
“Donald Trump may not like it, but we are not an authoritarian country. We have a constitution and separation of powers. There is no ‘national emergency,’ and Trump cannot build his wall without congressional approval,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., tweeted. “The current fight in DC is about more than a wall. It’s about whether we are a nation of laws, where the president obeys the Constitution and democratic processes. The American people must inform Trump that we will not become an authoritarian nation.”
White House officials maintained that Trump’s move does not set a precedent for future presidents to use a state of emergency to override Congress — though many disagree.
“The president appears intent on stealing money addressing threats that exist in reality for a national emergency that exists entirely in his head,” Leahy said. “How urgent can it be when the President has clumsily threatened to invoke this “emergency” since October 2018?
