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[Page S5618]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DECLARATION OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on a somewhat related matter, again about
President Trump's overreach and lack of respect for any rule of law,
Senate Republicans will be forced to vote later this week on the
President's emergency declaration, which he is using to steal money
from our military to fund a border wall that he promised Mexico would
pay for. Again, my Republican colleagues face a choice about whether to
have the Senate enforce its role as a check on the executive branch.
By declaring a national emergency, the President has tried to go
around the constraints of his office to spend taxpayer dollars the way
he wants instead of the way the Congress appropriates. Remember,
Congress has explicitly and repeatedly rejected the President's request
for border wall funding. Now he is trying to improperly take it from
funds elsewhere--in this case, the military.
The Constitution dictates that Congress alone has the power of the
purse. Will my Republican colleagues vote to reassert those
constitutional powers, or will they buckle to the pressure of partisan
loyalty to the President?
And I say to some of my very conservative friends, conservatism says:
Let's not have large agglomerations of power. Let the individual have
the most freedom to exercise his or her will.
When the President overreaches, what has happened to the true
conservatives? They are quiet. They almost hide under their desks.
History will not look at it kindly.
Many of my Republican colleagues have military installations,
schools, and major projects in their States that would suffer as a
result of the President's emergency. The Pentagon last week warned of
dire outcomes if this funding is not restored, even warning that lives
might be at risk.
Will Senate Republicans vote to defend our troops, their families,
their children? Will they vote to defend millions of dollars of
important projects in their States, including medical facilities in
North Carolina, a hurricane recovery project in Florida, and a middle
school in Kentucky? Well, these questions will be answered this week.
I have seen reports that the Republicans are searching for other ways
to restore military funding other than by ending the President's
emergency declaration. Make no mistake--Democrats will not assent to
backfilling accounts or other backhanded ways of approving taxpayer
dollars for the President's border wall. The President said Mexico
would pay for it. That is the only thing he said during the campaign.
When people yelled ``build the wall,'' it was Mexico that was going to
pay for it, not American taxpayers and certainly not our military--not
the brave men and women who risk their lives for us and whose families
go through such hardship.
The simplest, quickest, and only way of protecting military funding
is for my Republican friends to join us in terminating the emergency
declaration later this week.
I urge--urge--my Republican colleagues to think about their States
and the important military projects that hang in the balance, to think
about the precedent it would set for this President and for future
Presidents, and above all, to think about the constitutional questions,
to just read the Constitution and defend the Article I powers of
Congress given to us by the Founders.
I yield the floor.
____________________
