Home United States USA — Financial Klukowski: President Trump Must Ensure Spending Bill Does Not Cancel Emergency Powers

Klukowski: President Trump Must Ensure Spending Bill Does Not Cancel Emergency Powers

252
0
SHARE

Insiders around D. C. are talking about how the president can sign the spending bill that was unveiled this week, take the money that it…
Insiders around D. C. are talking about how the president can sign the spending bill that was unveiled this week, take the money that it authorizes for building a wall, then use executive authority to fund the rest of it. The president must proceed with extreme caution, because the opponents of the wall are the ones writing this 1,169-page monster legislation, and a single unnoticed sentence could lead to a court ruling that the president has signed away all of this legal authority to secure the border – including emergency authority.
As President Trump announced that he will declare a national emergency, Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) immediately decried the act, saying they will defend their Article I authority against the president’s power grab. They call this an “end run around Congress.”
That is laughable to the point of being absurd. President Trump is not claiming any inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution. Instead, he is acting exclusively within the authority that Congress has explicitly granted to any president under the National Emergencies Act, which triggers 136 separate statutory powers that Congress has embedded in various laws. Presidents have declared 59 emergencies since 1979, most recently this month when President Trump declared an emergency regarding the turmoil in Venezuela.
This is only one more emergency, similar to the previous 59. Congress has authorized this. The Constitution will not burst into flames. The sky will not fall.
Try the decaf.
Under current law, the president has a host of methods to build the border wall. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 authorizes building the wall, so the issue becomes one of funding. He does not require any additional authority from Congress; he requires only money.
If President Trump declares an emergency under the National Emergencies Act of 1976 (found at 50 U. S. C. § 1601) – as he says he will – then under 33 U. S. C. § 2293 he would have immediate access to $14 billion and could direct the acting defense secretary to order the Army Corps of Engineers to build the wall with that money.
That is far more than the $5.7 billion he needs for the most critical 231 miles of border wall, and does not even count whatever Congress has supposedly given him in this enormous spending bill.
Even without an emergency, the president has authority under 10 U. S. C. § 284 to have military resources build the wall, though his lawyers must be absolutely certain that this power also includes the ability to fund the building project without an emergency.
Under current law, the president has transfer authority, by which he could move certain funds from specific government programs and departments to others that could be used to build the wall.
Additionally, under the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the U.

Continue reading...