Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I join my Democratic colleagues on the floor to once again speak out against this President and his administration's outrageous abuses of Executive power.

While, unfortunately, there is a myriad of Presidential abuses to which I could be referring, today, this evening, I am here to discuss two of his most recent and most egregious actions that have not only run afoul of Congress's authority and our constitutional system of checks and balances but also compromise our national security.

It began with the President making a phony national emergency declaration to bypass Congress and steal money to build his border wall under the auspices of a ``crisis''--one of the President's own making-- in pursuit of advancing the most anti-immigrant agenda this country has seen in generations, all manufactured to secure Federal funds to build his often-touted vanity wall on our southern border. This is a wall the American people were not supposed to pay for and that we, time and again, have indicated we do not want.

Now, one would think this extreme overreach of Executive authority alone would get our colleagues on the other side of the aisle riled up enough to defend the Constitution's system of checks and balances, but in declaring his national emergency, President Trump took his overreach one step further, ransacking critical Federal funds--taxpayer dollars-- that were appropriated by Congress to fund important military construction projects and national security priorities across the country. To do what with? To put money toward building his border wall.

To be clear, instead of Federal funds going toward military infrastructure priorities such as a new pier and maintenance facility at Naval Base Kitsap in my home State of Washington that would help guide and protect our Navy's vital nuclear submarines, those funds are now going to pay for Trump's border wall.

Instead of our military using Federal funds already authorized by Congress to increase access to childcare for our servicemembers and their families, those funds are now going into paying for Trump's wall.

While this behavior from our President is predictable, it is no less wrong, underhanded, and unacceptable, and I know I am not the only one who thinks that way.

Since the President's rash move to reprogram billions of dollars from our military construction budget toward his border wall, I have heard repeatedly from constituents who are upset by this President's brazen acts of recklessness and are wondering how the President of the United States can just step over Congress to do whatever he wants with our Federal budget, especially when it is on the backs of our troops and their families.

I refuse to stand by and do nothing while this President hurts my State and so many others. Why? Because he cares more about his vanity project than our troops, the military community, or the American people.

That is why, in the coming days, I plan to introduce new legislation that will not only recoup the military construction funds that were shamefully raided for Trump's border wall but put in place new safeguards to make sure no President today or in the future can so effortlessly bypass the will of Congress to loot the Federal budget.

We need to put a check on this President, plain and simple. Right now, we can do so by standing up for Congress and our constitutional authority to set the Federal budget and pay our Nation's bills.

So I urge my colleagues to join Democrats in voting to rescind President Trump's bogus national emergency declaration, taking that first step to roll back the President's plunder and hold him accountable because as a coequal branch of our Federal Government, it is not just our job, it is our sworn duty and one this body and our Republican colleagues cannot ignore.

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