Breaking: Pelosi is moving forward TODAY with a bill to override President Trump's border wall national emergency declaration... and she says she has the votes to pass it!
We've covered the constitutionality and legality of Trump's border wall national emergency at length over the past two weeks. While Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the "Power of the Purse," Congress also has the ability to appropriate discretionary funding, which the Executive can decide how to divvy up.
This is absolutely essential. Congress has a hard enough time passing its yearly appropriations acts on time, can you imagine if every single government program required specific Congressional authorization? The Founders understood this wasn't feasible, so they allowed Congress to loosely appropriate funds to specific Departments and give the Executive Branch the authority to decide which programs to use the funding for...
Every year, Congress authorizes the Department of Justice to use resources seized from drug cartels and traffickers to help fund their anti-drug mission. The same is true for the Department of Justice's discretionary drug interdiction fund. The only string that Congress attached is that these two pots of funding must be used to prevent drugs from being trafficked into the country.
Congress also appropriates tens of billions a year to the Pentagon's military construction fund (MILCON). It would be insane for Congress to have to approve every time the military wanted to build a road or repair one of its buildings. Instead, Congress gives the military the funds and only stipulates that it must be used for construction projects that are in the national interest.
What Trump is doing is quite simple. By declaring illegal immigration and drug and the open borders a national emergency, he is able to "reprogram" this money for the border wall project. He can do this because the project is "germane" -- in other words, relevant -- to the general stipulations that Congress outlined. Border walls stop drugs from entering the country and keep the country safe from criminals and terrorists.
This is the same power that Barack Obama used to give 1.7 billion to Iran and 1 billion to the United Nations radical climate treaty. He found discretionary funding appropriated to the State Department for diplomacy and reprogrammed it. He did it to prop up our enemies and Congress never lifted a finger. Trump is declaring the emergency to protect us, and Democrats and Republicans are scrambling to stop him!
When you add in the 1.375 billion that Congress already approved, Trump's reprogramming and national emergency declaration will allow him free up 8.8 billion for border wall construction. Instead of being limited to just 55 miles of new fencing, this allows President Trump to break ground on over 350 miles of new wall. And it is all constitutional and legal.
But while the National Emergencies Act allows President Trump to do this, it also affords Congress the right to block him by passing a "Resolution of Disapproval." It takes a simple majority in both the House and Senate to pass them.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) has introduced the resolution, but he did so as a Privileged Resolution. That means that it must reach the floor TODAY to begin debate and voting.
Up until now, we have been reporting on which Republicans are leaning towards voting to block the President. It's not hypothetical. Republicans are beginning to openly declare they will vote to block President Trump's border wall project!
"If the House passes the Resolution of Disapproval and it is a clean resolution, I will support that," Sen Susan Collins (R-ME) told reporters this week.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has also come out and declared Trump's National Emergency to be "inconsistent with the Constitution." Alexander appropriated these discretionary funds, now he wants to block Trump from using his discretion!
Our count has as many as EIGHT other Republican Senators (ten in total) ready to join the Democrats to block President Trump's border wall order: Senators Lisa Murkowski (AK), Thom Tillis (NC), Cory Gardner (CO), Marco Rubio (FL), Mitt Romney (UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Jerry Moran (KS).
Democrats are saying that there are as many as three dozen House Republicans willing to vote to block Trump, and the first of these traitors are signing onto the resolution today!
Pelosi and the Democrats aren't just vying for enough votes to pass these resolutions in the House and Senate... They believe they can even get enough votes to override President Trump's veto!
The National Emergencies Act of 1976 stipulates that if the House of Representatives passes a Resolution of Disapproval, then the Senate must vote on it within 18 days. Mitch McConnell won't be able to block it. He must let it come to the floor.
If the Left fails, even if they fall short by just one vote, then it is over. President Trump will get to build the wall.
But if Pelosi and her GOP traitor allies succeed in blocking the President, then the border wall will never get built!
All of this is happening TODAY!
You must fight back and stop these radical Democrats and open border Republicans from overriding President Trump's border wall executive order!
Now or never,
Joe Otto
Conservative Daily
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