By Mark Gruenberg
And John Wojcik
Donald
Trump wants to use the pretext of a “national emergency” to grab billions of
federal dollars to build his Mexican Wall. Xavier Becerra, California’s
attorney general, and Sens. Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders were among those
who immediately came out to say they will try to stop him. Even two Republican
senators, Sens. Rand Paul and Susan Collins, not to mention countless Latino
groups, joined the still-growing chorus of national resistance to the
unconstitutional power grab.
Trump,
the right-wing GOP president, grumbled and groaned but said Feb. 14 he would
sign a money bill to fund the federal agencies he gleefully earlier shut down
for 35 days, starting at midnight Dec. 21.
That
decision will soothe the nerves of the 800,000 federal workers whom Trump
either locked out or forced to work without pay for five weeks. Some still
haven’t gotten paid. All are scared or fretting, or worried about how to pay
the rent, buy groceries, and reclaim repossessed cars.
But
that $333 billion money bill contains only $1.3 billion for “border security.”
None of it is for Trump’s “great, big, beautiful” concrete wall along the whole
2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border — a wall foes call both racist and ineffective.
Instead, he’ll get 55 miles of unspecified fencing in Texas.
All
of this begs the question of how serious the GOP and Trump really are about the
wall. When they had control of all three branches of the federal government for
two years they never moved to actually build it. When Trump was offered $25
billion for a wall a year ago he turned it down.
What
they really want is to keep the issue alive to stir up racism and fear among
white voters. Their hope is that white voters in general, like much of the
Trump base, will see immigrants and people of color as the enemy. That fear
plus fear of socialism and communism and the fear that Democrats are the party
of all those “invaders” and “socialists” seems to be the way they want to go
for the 2020 Trump re-election campaign. And even if Trump is impeached the
strategy will work, they hope, for the rest of the Republican Party. The phony
“national emergency” helps lay the groundwork for this racist strategy while,
at the same time, testing just how far the president can go in overthrowing
constitutional norms.
With
Trump’s declaration, he has to consider where to grab money for his wall —
money that has already been allocated by Congress to other areas. The biggest
available pots are the Defense Department and disaster relief funds.
Democratic
leaders, notably House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., call Trump’s “national
emergency” brainstorm stupid, and worse.
“This
is not a national emergency and the president’s fear-mongering doesn’t make it
one,” she said in a joint statement with Senate Minority Leader Charles
Schumer, D-N.Y.
“Declaring
a national emergency would be a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the
presidency and…naked contempt for the rule of law,” they added.
“He
couldn’t convince Mexico, the American people or their elected representatives
to pay for his ineffective and expensive wall, so now he’s trying an end-run
around Congress in a desperate attempt to put taxpayers on the hook for it,”
the two concluded.
The
Constitution puts Congress clearly in charge of the national purse. Yesterday
Pelosi said she was considering all options on the issue of reacting to the
Trump power grab, including action in the courts which, it is widely believed,
would declare the power grab unconstitutional.
In
reality, the Congress could stop the president in a heartbeat but that would
take political will sorely lacking these days in that branch of government. All
the Congress has to do is declare the emergency null and void and then send the
nullification to the president. If he refuses to sign it the nullification of
the “emergency” automatically takes effect. If he vetoes it then Congress
overrides with a two thirds vote. A legislative body seriously concerned about
its constitutional prerogative would do that immediately after a fake emergency
declaration was signed by this or by any other president.
When
President Truman tried declaring a national emergency when he wanted to seize
steel mills in order to break a strike it was the courts, however, not the
Congress that stopped him.
Sens.
Harris and Sanders say they will try to curb Trump legislatively “My colleagues
and I have introduced two bills to prohibit the president from diverting
military construction and disaster relief funds to his vanity project of a
border wall. It’s clear now that he is willing to go around Congress to do this.
We must pass these bills immediately,” Harris tweeted.
Sanders
voted, reluctantly for the money bill even though it contained “border
security” funds, while Harris did not. It passed 83-16. Sanders called Trump’s
“national emergency” scheme illegal. “It is clear to me that there is not a
‘national emergency’ with regard to the southern border,” Sanders tweeted.
“What President Trump is doing is unlawful and must be opposed vigorously in
the courts and legislatively.”
Becerra,
California’s Democratic attorney general, agreed. He tweeted that he’s going to
court to try to outlaw Trump’s ersatz emergency, and predicted other AGs will
join him. One, in Washington state, already said he will do so if Trump’s edict
robs his state of expected federal funds.
“Any
border crisis is of @realDonaldTrump’s own making,” Becerra tweeted. “If #Trump
oversteps his authority and abandons negotiations w/#Congress by declaring a
fabricated #NationalEmergency, we won’t only call his bluff, we will do what we
must to hold him accountable. No one is above the law.”
“How
we do things matters,” Sen. Paul said. “Over 1,000 pages dropped in the middle
of the night” – the money bill – “and extra-constitutional executive actions
are wrong, no matter which party does them.” Sen. Collins agreed with that
constitutional analysis. She also reminded Trump that Congress, not the
president, sets national priorities through allotting money.
“I
don’t believe the National Emergencies Act contemplates a president
unilaterally reallocating billions of dollars, already designated for specific
purposes, outside of the normal appropriations process. The National
Emergencies Act was intended to apply to major natural disasters or
catastrophic events, such as the attacks on our country on 9/11,” she said. The
pro-Latino groups focused on the racism behind Trump’s action. (IPA Service)
Courtesy: People’s World
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