Congresswoman (CA) Nancy Pelosi addresses the 2014 National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) Executive Council Winter Session at the Westin Washington City Center in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Mar. 13, 2014. USDA photo by Lance Cheung.
Despite their best efforts to keep the southern border open and flowing freely with illegal immigrants, House Democrats failed to override President Trump’s veto of their bill blocking his emergency border wall funding. Susan Ferrechio reports for the Washington Examiner:
Only a handful of Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats on the 248-181 vote. That deprived the measure of the two-thirds majority needed to revoke Trump’s February emergency declaration that authorized him to move $3.6 billion in military funds to a southern border wall project.
The defeat, which was widely anticipated, kills the effort in Congress to block Trump’s wall funding grab, but numerous court challenges to the declaration are now pending and could ultimately stop the president.
Democrats accused the president of violating the Constitution, which provides Congress with the power to appropriate federal funds.
“The bottom line is that this emergency declaration is nothing more than an end run around a bipartisan majority of both the House and the Senate, in complete disregard of our Constitutional separation of powers,” Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon, said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the national emergency declaration “a lawless power grab” that both Republicans and Democrats oppose.
Both Republicans and Democrats said they opposed Trump moving funds lawmakers assigned to the military construction budget.
Most Republicans, however, agreed with Trump’s reasoning that the surge in illegal immigration on the southern border constitutes a crisis that could be abated with new border wall construction. And most in the GOP believe the National Emergencies Act provided him with the power to shift that funding.
Republicans on Tuesday pointed to the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border every month, the influx of illegal drugs, and the increase in gang violence perpetuated by illegal immigrants as the legitimate rationale for Trump’s action.
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