McConnell's surrender of legislative branch authority is worthy of the term despicable
Trump declares an emergency in the middle of the worst Trump speech ever—and that's saying something
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/2/15/1834767/-Trump-declares-an-emergency-in-the-middle-of-the-worst-Trump-speech-ever-and-that-s-saying-something
Donald Trump walked into the Rose Garden on Friday morning, and, as expected, abused the National Emergency Act to appropriate funds for a wall along the southern border. What many probably didn’t expect was a speech so bumbling, random, and scattered that it made the average Donald Trump speech play like Shakespeare.
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To get his money, Trump will take money from the Department of Defense from funds that were requested by the Pentagon and approved by Congress. These are funds that were earmarked not just for addressing emergencies, but for building military infrastructure. Trump is essentially stealing classrooms and homes from military families, taking hospital beds away from veterans. And he’s taking money from proven, effective programs to interdict drugs to fund a boondoggle that every expert agrees will not address the issue. What’s very likely to happen is that Trump will not get his wall, but that effective programs will be wrecked in the process.
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By declaring a “border security emergency” after weeks of negotiations carried out expressly to address the issue of border security, Trump hasn’t just stolen the funds for his pet project: He has signaled to the Congress that any negotiation, on any topic, is pointless. Why attempt to reach any form of compromise when Trump is simply going to declare that he wins, even when he doesn’t?
And it’s not just Trump at fault. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s surrender of legislative branch authority is worthy of the term despicable. From the moment he took control of the Senate, it has seemed that McConnell has been poking around the edges of destroying the legislative process. Now he’s simply come at it with an axe. That McConnell agreed to support Trump in declaring a national emergency in order to gain his signature on the bill doesn’t make things better. It simply highlights how McConnell was willing to surrender the last vestige of Senate independence for a scrawl he knew in advance was worthless. That McConnell was hoping to dodge blame for a second shutdown by forever altering the balance of the government is intolerable. That he might have agreed to everything in the hopes that the judiciary would save the day certainly doesn’t make things any better, especially when McConnell has made it his ambition to fill the judiciary with exactly the sort of people who will not stop this farce.
Donald Trump’s actions are a unilateral attempt to violate the boundaries of Constitutional authority assigned to congress and the executive. Mitch McConnell has chosen to aid him in that action rather than protecting the institution he is supposed to lead.
The only thing that Democrats can do at this point is to fire back. Nancy Pelosi can immediately bring a vote in the House that would require an end to the emergency declaration. That bill would then be taken up in the Senate where—assuming the rule of law still counts for something—McConnell could not stop it from getting a vote.
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