Ron Paul Liberty Report: 'Emergencies Do Not Trump The Constitution'

Source:Ron Paul Liberty Report- U.S. Representative Ron Paul: R, Texas. 

“Using “national emergencies” to rule by diktat is an old and unfortunate tradition among U.S. presidents. It is also unconstitutional.”

From the Ron Paul Liberty Report

In the United States we have not only separation of powers, but three branches in our national government that all have different roles and responsibilities. Whether they're all equal or not and under the Constitution they're supposed to be, they all have different roles and responsibilities. If the President wants new funding to pay for one of his new priorities or additional funding to an existing program in the government, he has to get that approved by Congress. He can't just pass that new funding and objective on his own. he has to get that approved by House and Senate and sign it into law.

Source:Newsmax- President Donald Trump: "what national emergency?"

I'm not a lawyer and neither is Representative Ron Paul, but just looking at President Trump's so-called national emergency there are at least two obvious problems with looking at it from the outside.

The first one is practical and that the emergency that the President Trump is declaring simply doesn't exist. Not even Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, America One News, or any other right-wing pro-Trump media outlet is reporting that there are millions, thousands, or even hundreds of less of people coming across our southern border right now illegally. If there is any emergency whatsoever as it relates to illegal immigration in America and I don't believe there is one, but the fact that have 10-15 million illegal immigrants in America in a country of 320 million people is certainly an issue that this country has been trying to deal with going back to the Reagan Administration.

President Trump said himself the day that he declared his so-called national emergency that he didn't have to declare right now. I don't know about you and I image everyone would agree with this, but if my house was on fire I would call the Fire Department right away to get the fire put out, because that would obviously be an emergency. Donald Trump ever since he started running for President in the summer of 2015 has been talking about the need for a border wall on our southern border and there is an emergency at the border.

Donald Trump, was elected President a year and a half later after he announced his presidential campaign and has been President for 25 months now and not once until after Republicans lost the House in November 2018, did he either officially declare an emergency at the national border, or send up a bill to the Republican Congress in 2017-18 to get his border wall completed. And you can talk about 60 vote rule in the Senate all you want and that Democrats had 48-49 seats in the Senate during that Congress, but if you're familiar with Congressional spending rules, you know that Congress can pass a spending bill out of the House and Senate with simple majorities in both chambers.

President Trump and Congressional Republicans could've passed a border security bill on their own with just Republican votes both in the House and Senate under reconciliation. But they chose to spend six months on ObamaCare repeal and when they failed there they went to tax cuts where they did pass their tax cuts through reconciliation in the House and Senate. So President Trump seriously has a credibility problem claiming that there is an emergency at the border which is why he declared his national emergency, when he's already admitted that he didn't have to declare his emergency.

The other issue with President Trump's so-called national emergency is constitutional. Congress, not the execute appropriates money for the Federal Government. Congress, has the power of the purse and gets to decide what the government can spend and what they can't spend. Meaning that the executive can only spend money that has already been approved by Congress to spend on the priorities that Congress has approved at the levels that Congress has approved. In other words, Congress decides what the levels of funding are in the budget and where and how that money is spent . Once the President and Congress agree on what levels of funding and where that money is going to be spent by the government, then the Executive has the responsibility to spend and enforce those laws that have already been passed and sign into law.

As much Donald Trump might want to be President of the Russian Federation or the King of the Saudi Kingdom, or lead any other right-wing or any other dictatorship in the world, unfortunately he's the President of the United States and just our problem to deal with. But we still have our checks and balances and separation of powers. Things that every single American gets to learn about when they're in high school. I took U.S. Government as a sophomore in high school. This is not something that we have to read books or listen to documentaries about as adults, but something that we learn in high school and take further courses on in college if we decide to do that, but something that Donald Trump seems to have very little knowledge about or interest in.

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