[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 12, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S1770]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Declaration of National Emergency

  Mr. SCHUMER. By the end of this week, the Senate must vote on the 
resolution to terminate the President's declaration of a national 
emergency.
  There are three very clear reasons to vote to terminate. First, there 
is no factual basis of an emergency at the border. The President made 
that clear when he said he didn't need to do this. If we allow 
Presidents to declare emergencies for such nonemergency-type situations 
because they want to do it, we are headed down a very bad road.
  Second, the emergency would cannibalize funds intended for our brave 
men and women in uniform in order to pay for the wall, including 
military construction, and maybe even military pay and pensions.
  The bottom line is, we hear from the other side how we have to make 
sure we give our soldiers what they need. We completely agree, but all 
of a sudden, when there is this wall, we take it away from the 
soldiers; we take it away from military readiness. That is not a trade 
most Americans would make.
  Third and most important is the danger to our Constitution. The 
emergency declaration is an injury to this great Constitution under 
which we live. It claims powers for the Presidency that were explicitly 
given to Congress. It distorts the separation of powers, and it sets a 
dangerous precedent for future Presidents.
  The bottom line is, one of the things the Founding Fathers gave the 
most thought to was the balance of power and how to prevent an 
overpowerful and overleaning executive branch. That is why they gave 
Congress the power of the purse. Are we going to reverse 220 years of a 
balance of power because a President is demanding a wall that Congress 
couldn't get him, that Mexico couldn't pay for? It goes far beyond the 
wall, whether you are for or against it. It goes far beyond all these 
other issues. It goes to the very nature of our government, and it will 
set us on a path that historians will come back and look at as a very 
bad turning point for America.