Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Tuesday that Republicans’ constitutional concerns over President Trump’s national emergency declaration to secure the southern border is “pure, unadulterated B.S.”
The Senate will vote Thursday on a resolution that would nullify President Trump’s national emergency to build a wall along the southern border. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who sponsored the Senate bill with Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), plus Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Tom Tillis (R-NC), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) have all said that they will vote for the resolution to end the national emergency and make it harder to secure the border. Thirteen House Republicans also voted with Democrats in February to end Trump’s national emergency.
Many senators, such as Sen. Collins and Paul, have claimed that Trump’s national emergency overreaches on Congress’ authority to spend money. Collins says that she opposes Trump’s executive overreach just like she did with Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) illegal alien amnesty program.
However, one federal district judge ruled in August 2018 that DACA was illegal, whereas many lawyers have argued that Trump has the authority under the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to reappropriate money to build the wall.
Brooks, one of the leading voices on immigration in Congress, said that President Trump has the constitutional authority to declare a national emergency to build a wall and that any concern over any constitutional abuse in regards to Trump’s national emergency amounts to “B.S.”
Rep. Brooks said, “That argument is pure, unadulterated, B.S. Congress passed laws that the president signed, which empowered the president to declare national emergencies. Congress passed laws that the president signed, that allows the United States to shift monies from some programs to other programs to address the national emergency. So Congress has fully authorized and appropriated the money that President Trump hopes to use protecting Americans from dying under these national emergency circumstances.”
President Trump, in an interview with Breitbart News on Monday, said that the found it odd that some Republicans plan to oppose his plan to secure the border through the National Emergencies Act.
“We have a vote coming up on this whole national emergency thing it’s an 80/20 issue in our favor, it’s border security, a wall, no crime versus open borders and nothing but crime,” Trump told Breitbart News in a face-to-face Oval Office discussion. “Forty-seven Democrats will probably vote for the 20 percent issue, and with the Republicans, we have some that don’t vote for it. It’s hard to believe actually.”
Brooks asked rhetorically, “My question to those Republicans, who mistakenly believe there is no national emergency is very, very straightforward: how many tens of thousands of dead Americans does it take before you recognize when a national emergency exists?”
“We have roughly 2,000 Americans who die each year at the hands of illegal aliens because of homicides committed by illegal aliens on American soil. You have over 30,000 Americans who die each other because of our porous southern border and the illegal shipments of heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, and other drugs that result in overdoses,” the Alabama conservative continued. “So you have over 30,000 dead Americans each year because of illegal aliens and our porous southern border, how many dead Americans does it take to recognize what you recognize what an emergency is?”
Brooks added, “There’s no national emergency that has been declared in the history of the United States that has had this kind of death rate associated with it over an extended period of time–more than 300,000 dead Americans over a decade, 600,000 over two decades, how many dead Americans does it take?”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
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