While there’s a delicious schadenfreude in this post on The Plum Line by Gary Sargent:
Senate Republicans appear to be in a panic about President Trump’s threat to declare a national emergency to realize his unquenchable fantasy of a big, beautiful wall on the southern border. Republicans are reportedly worried that such a move could divide them, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has delivered that warning to Trump in private conversations.
Republicans have good reason to be deeply nervous. Here’s why: According to one of the country’s leading experts on national emergencies, it appears that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can trigger a process that could require the GOP-controlled Senate to hold a vote on such a declaration by Trump — which would put Senate Republicans in a horrible political position.
Really, really, the entire legislation, called the National Emergencies Act, that might enable Trump to make funding decisions without the participation of Congress should be retracted by Congress. I don’t care who proposed it, who passed it, and who opposed it. It’s clearly a transgression against the original intent of the Constitution, and it should be obviated by Congress, or, perhaps as good, voided by SCOTUS.
Call me a stickler for good design if you want. The weakness exhibited by Congress in its determination to delegate responsibilities and powers while at least part of it is cravenly deferential to the Presidency is becoming a dreadful reminder of what happened to the Senators of Rome. They became weaker and weaker until they were little more than a mark of success – and then they became nothing at all.
And halfway makes me wish the USSR was still around, because it’d make us shape up and stop this stupid ideological feuding.
