[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 26, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H2105-H2106]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         EMERGENCY DECLARATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Malinowski) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Speaker, I rise to urge that we come together 
today to defend the Constitution of the United States by repudiating 
President Trump's emergency declaration of February 15.
  Few provisions of the Constitution are more plain than Article I, 
Section 9, Clause 7: ``No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but 
in consequence of appropriations made by law.''
  The President has immense powers, but he cannot spend money unless 
we, the people's Representatives in Congress, have agreed that he can.
  Now, there might be extraordinary circumstances when a President 
could violate that principle, when all of us would agree that he must 
act but there is no time to ask Congress for funds: a military invasion 
or a massive natural disaster, for example. The National Emergencies 
Act provides for that.
  But if the situation on the southern border were that kind of 
emergency, then the President hasn't been acting like it. For 2 years, 
when his party controlled the House and Senate, he never asked us for 
money to build a wall, and if we truly faced that kind of imminent 
threat, a wall would not even be an emergency measure given how long it 
would take to build.
  The critical point is this: When the President finally got around to 
asking us for money, we deliberated on his request, and we said no. You 
may believe we were right or you may believe we were wrong, but that is 
what the elected Representatives of the American people decided.
  So the question before us today is not how do we secure the border; 
it is whether this President or any President can use emergency powers 
to defy the Congress when he disagrees with a

[[Page H2106]]

decision that we have made. Are we going to stand by and watch this 
President seize funds from the military to forcibly take land from law-
abiding American citizens to build something that Congress has said 
should not be built?
  We know this would be wrong. The National Emergencies Act is for 
genuine emergencies. It is not a get-out-of-the-Constitution-free card 
for Presidents who want something that Congress won't give them.
  Now, I have heard some people say that President Obama did the same 
thing. I am sorry, he did not. Both President Obama and President Bush 
were sometimes accused of exceeding their constitutional authority; the 
courts sometimes overruled them. But neither Obama nor Bush nor Nixon 
nor Reagan nor Roosevelt nor Lincoln nor any President since the 
founding of our Republic has ever decreed an emergency to spend money 
that the Congress explicitly denied them.

  If you want to find a precedent for what President Trump has done, I 
can give you one. When I was a diplomat representing our country and 
standing up for our values around the world, I had this exact same 
debate with authoritarian governments in Ethiopia, in Bahrain, and in 
Egypt, telling them: Do not use emergency powers to get around your 
constitutions. I never thought I would have that kind of argument with 
a President of the United States.
  Many of my Republican colleagues have been saying that America must 
not go the way of Venezuela, and they are right. When President Trump 
said in his State of the Union that we must never become a socialist 
country, I joined them in getting to my feet and applauding.
  But how do you think Venezuela got to be a socialist country? I will 
tell you. President Maduro declared a state of economic emergency to 
give himself the power to defy his elected national assembly and spend 
money however he pleased.
  That is not America. We must never become that. We believe in rule of 
law, not rule by decree.
  We disagree passionately within the boundaries the Constitution 
draws, but we agree zealously to defend those boundaries when any one 
of our party or any party tries to cross those boundaries. That is how 
we have survived as a constitutional democracy. It is the only way we 
can survive.
  We are divided enough right now, so, please, let's not allow another 
tear in the constitutional fabric that holds us together. Let's unite 
as patriots on this one question so that we can safely disagree as 
partisans on everything else.

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