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[Page S1637]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Declaration of National Emergency
Madam President, on another matter, the national emergency. It seems
with each passing day, another Republican comes out to oppose the
President's declaration of a national emergency at the border. Over the
weekend, Senator Rand Paul, who often speaks his own mind, became the
fourth Republican to officially announce his support for terminating
the President's emergency declaration, apparently guaranteeing enough
votes for passage in the Senate. I hope and expect that Senator Paul
will not be the last Republican to announce their support because this
should be an issue that transcends party. The President's emergency
declaration gnaws at our very fabric, particularly the separation of
powers. The President--this President--is trying to bend the law to his
will, to accrue powers that are not his.
There is no evidence that some new emergency exists at the border.
The President himself has said he ``didn't need to do this.'' An
emergency, by definition, is something that you need to do. Everyone
here knows the truth. The President didn't declare an emergency because
there is one. He declared an emergency because he lost in Congress,
threw another temper tantrum, and wanted to go around it. That, my
friends, is a gross abuse of our constitutional system.
Article I--not article II, the executive branch article, not article
III, the judiciary branch article, but article I, Congress--gives
Congress the power of the purse, not the President. Were we to permit
an Executive--any Executive--to declare an emergency every time they
lost in Congress, what would be the point of Congress? We would be
trading our democracy for a monarchy, the very thing our Framers
abhorred and that our Constitution guards against. Remember, back then,
why did the colonists--the brave colonists--rebel? It was against the
overreaching power of King George. They said: We need a government that
is going to protect us from the overreaching power of any individual,
particularly one empowered to lead a nation. That is why they did it.
It is relevant today. Donald Trump has shown more desire to overreach
than any President. Some people may like that, but it goes against 200
years of wisdom in this country, and I hope people will reject it.
Whatever you think of the policy at the southern border--I suppose
Senator Paul is very much for the wall--no President should be allowed
to discard the Constitution on a whim and do an end run around a
coequal branch of government.
This vote on the resolution to terminate this emergency is not a vote
about policy, it is not a vote about party. It is a vote about
Presidential power and the precedent it will set, which will reach far
beyond the current debate about the border. The debate about the border
will be forgotten, but the fact that this Congress, this Senate, allows
a President to so overreach and rearrange singlehandedly the balancing
blocks in our democracy will be regarded by historians as a bleak day.
I say to my colleagues, that doesn't just apply to how you vote. It
applies to whether we have enough votes to override the President
should he veto this resolution when it passes.
