Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday he always hoped President Donald Trump wouldn’t declare a national emergency to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall, and confirmed the Senate has enough votes to block the move.
McCONNELL: “I was one of those hoping the president would not take the national emergency route.”
McConnell, R-Ky., said Trump will veto the resolution of disapproval and “in all likelihood,” the veto would be upheld by the House, which would need a two-thirds super majority to shoot down it down.
Per the Louisville Courier-Journal:
“I was one of those hoping the president would not take the national emergency route,” McConnell told reporters Monday in Louisville. “Once you decide to do that, I said I would support it, but I was hoping he wouldn’t take that particular path.”
The House voted 245-182 in support of the resolution blocking the president’s emergency declaration.
McConnell told reporters he was concerned future Democratic presidents would resort to an emergency declaration to bypass Congress and fund issues like climate change or gun control.
“That’s one reason I argued — obviously without success — to the president that he not take this route,” McConnell said.
Trump declared a national emergency in February after Congress sent him a bipartisan funding bill that didn’t include his $5.7 billion demand for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The emergency declaration allows him to free up billions from other sources to pay for the barrier, which he claims is necessary to reduce the flow of drugs and gang members into the country.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said in a speech Saturday he would vote to block the declaration, giving Democrats the needed 51 votes needed. Paul said he “can’t vote to give extra-Constitutional powers to the president.”
“I can’t vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress,” Paul said, as reported by the Bowling Green newspaper. “We may want more money for border security, but Congress didn’t authorize it. If we take away those checks and balances, it’s a dangerous thing.”
Paul also penned an op-ed for Fox News in which he said if the declaration ends up in the Supreme Court, which is likely where this is headed, it will get struck down as unconstitutional.
“Congress clearly expressed its will not to spend more than $1.3 billion and to restrict how much of that money could go to barriers,” Paul wrote. “Therefore, President Trump’s emergency order is clearly in opposition to the will of Congress. Moreover, the broad principle of separation of powers in the Constitution delegates the power of the purse to Congress.”
Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina have all said they’ll vote with Democrats.
“As a U.S. senator, I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress,” Tillis wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “As a conservative, I cannot endorse a precedent that I know future left-wing presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms.”