[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 153 (Monday, September 23, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S5618]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   DECLARATION OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on a somewhat related matter, again about 
President Trump's overreach and lack of respect for any rule of law, 
Senate Republicans will be forced to vote later this week on the 
President's emergency declaration, which he is using to steal money 
from our military to fund a border wall that he promised Mexico would 
pay for. Again, my Republican colleagues face a choice about whether to 
have the Senate enforce its role as a check on the executive branch.
  By declaring a national emergency, the President has tried to go 
around the constraints of his office to spend taxpayer dollars the way 
he wants instead of the way the Congress appropriates. Remember, 
Congress has explicitly and repeatedly rejected the President's request 
for border wall funding. Now he is trying to improperly take it from 
funds elsewhere--in this case, the military.
  The Constitution dictates that Congress alone has the power of the 
purse. Will my Republican colleagues vote to reassert those 
constitutional powers, or will they buckle to the pressure of partisan 
loyalty to the President?
  And I say to some of my very conservative friends, conservatism says: 
Let's not have large agglomerations of power. Let the individual have 
the most freedom to exercise his or her will.
  When the President overreaches, what has happened to the true 
conservatives? They are quiet. They almost hide under their desks. 
History will not look at it kindly.
  Many of my Republican colleagues have military installations, 
schools, and major projects in their States that would suffer as a 
result of the President's emergency. The Pentagon last week warned of 
dire outcomes if this funding is not restored, even warning that lives 
might be at risk.
  Will Senate Republicans vote to defend our troops, their families, 
their children? Will they vote to defend millions of dollars of 
important projects in their States, including medical facilities in 
North Carolina, a hurricane recovery project in Florida, and a middle 
school in Kentucky? Well, these questions will be answered this week.
  I have seen reports that the Republicans are searching for other ways 
to restore military funding other than by ending the President's 
emergency declaration. Make no mistake--Democrats will not assent to 
backfilling accounts or other backhanded ways of approving taxpayer 
dollars for the President's border wall. The President said Mexico 
would pay for it. That is the only thing he said during the campaign. 
When people yelled ``build the wall,'' it was Mexico that was going to 
pay for it, not American taxpayers and certainly not our military--not 
the brave men and women who risk their lives for us and whose families 
go through such hardship.
  The simplest, quickest, and only way of protecting military funding 
is for my Republican friends to join us in terminating the emergency 
declaration later this week.
  I urge--urge--my Republican colleagues to think about their States 
and the important military projects that hang in the balance, to think 
about the precedent it would set for this President and for future 
Presidents, and above all, to think about the constitutional questions, 
to just read the Constitution and defend the Article I powers of 
Congress given to us by the Founders.
  I yield the floor.

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