Providing for Consideration of S.J. Res. Termination of National Emergency Declared By the President on February 2019
Floor Speech
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Mr. MORELLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 591 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 591
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the joint resolution (S.J. Res. 54) relating to a national emergency declared by the President on February 15, 2019. All points of order against consideration of the joint resolution are waived. The joint resolution shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the joint resolution are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the joint resolution and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure; and (2) one motion to commit.
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Mr. MORELLE. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave
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Mr. MORELLE. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 591, providing for consideration of S.J. Res. 54, relating to a national emergency declared by the President on February 15, 2019, under a closed rule.
The rule provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and provides one motion to commit.
Mr. Speaker, this joint resolution, pursuant to the National Emergencies Act, would terminate the national emergency declared by the President issued in July of this year. The same day that President Trump declared a state of emergency at our southern border, he, himself, said, ``I didn't need to do this.'' It is now clear that statement is true.
The President used an authority commonly used for construction at military bases in foreign countries during a time of emergency. That authority is now being used to divert $3.6 billion away from needed military construction projects to build a wall that does not have the needed political support in the House and Senate to be funded through normal appropriations.
This emergency declaration was a politically motivated power grab seeking to undermine congressional authority to oversee Federal spending.
The executive cannot run roughshod over this constitutional principle when the President fails to gain enough support for his policies. And exaggerating the threat posed by asylum seekers at our border has not been a convincing argument.
The American people have spoken. Over 60 percent of the public opposed this emergency declaration.
What has been the result of the Presidential proclamation? Life safety violations and fire risks at dilapidated military facilities are going unaddressed. The Pentagon has been forced to defund billions of dollars from 127 different military construction projects around the Nation and the globe.
In Portsmouth, Virginia, a warehouse has life-threatening conditions, but 330 servicemembers and civilian workers will continue to work in a building without enough fire exits and without a working fire alarm or sprinkler system. That doesn't seem to matter to President Trump, though. Fencing and barriers along the border are more important to our Commander in Chief.
In Maryland, money is being diverted from a planned childcare facility to help soldiers balance their family commitments with their service to our country.
In Kentucky, a middle school has lost out on $66 million in construction funding.
In South Carolina, they won't be getting the fire station approved and funded by Congress.
Our Armed Forces are also being denied a drone pilot training facility, a ballistic missile field, a submarine maintenance building, multiple training facilities, access improvements, and safety upgrades.
In my home State of New York, a $160 million appropriation is being taken away from projects at the United States Military Academy at West Point, including a state-of-the-art engineering facility to support the Center for Innovation and Engineering.
After being promised that Mexico would be paying for this wall, we are, instead, harming military readiness, safety, and innovation in response to a politically exaggerated threat.
We, in Congress, have already done our job to put military construction dollars where they are needed most. Now it is time for Congress to do our duty again and prevent this overreach by the President.
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Mr. MORELLE. I yield myself such time as I may consume, and thank my colleague. Let me just point out, I will admit, when I arrived here in November, having been elected in a special election, I was somewhat curious that--I think the last emergency meeting of the Rules Committee in the 115th Congress, the last one dealt with cheese curds. So I am not exactly sure how my friend and colleague defines emergencies.
What I do know is that this section of the National Emergencies Act, really, was constructed to help the President and the country deal with emergencies that arise before the Congress can act, but it is not intended to overrule congressional action. The Congress did act on this issue--there can be no question about that--during the last appropriations process.
The other thing that the gentleman mentions, which I do want to make clear, is the reason that we are doing this now, it is different. Perhaps the resolution is not different, but we now have a complete list of all of the projects that are now being defunded in order to move dollars over to the wall.
I would also just point out that, not only was the original resolution bipartisan in the Senate, but the resolution which passed within the last few days had 11 Republican Senators support it. I think one was unavailable who had supported it in the past and indicated that he would continue to support the resolution. So it is bipartisan.
This is truly the act of Congress. I know that my friend and colleague is well-associated with Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution: ``No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law. . . .''
So we are bound, and the Congress has acted. The Congress made the decision not to fund this. The President is using powers in a way that were not intended and diverting dollars away from much-needed, necessary projects that enhance our military readiness.
Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, this is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. The bipartisan Debbie Smith Act was included in the Violence Against Women Act that was supported by this House and was funded in the CR which we just enacted, which I was proud to support. I am not sure all Members voted for the CR, but I did, and the funding for the Debbie Smith Act is included in that.
Obviously, to suggest that this majority in this House is not interested in supporting women and women who are victims of violence, is, frankly, reprehensible.
But let me move back to the rule of law, which is what we are actually debating here, and it relates to our authority under the Emergency Powers Act.
I do want to note, to Mr. Woodall's point, we are not adding new law. This is a resolution, which is clearly a provision in the National Emergencies Act that allows the Congress to make the point that the emergency, if it ever existed, no longer exists and this funding is inappropriate, this shift of funding.
This is, again, a simple resolution passed by the Senate, and it indicates that, in our view, the congressional authority is where the appropriations process lies. It is articulated well in the Constitution, and the Congress has acted, has acted before and will act again.
The projects that are necessary for military construction around the globe and throughout the United States are vital, and support of this resolution and the rule would be something that I would think Mr. Woodall and Members of the House would agree to.
Mr. Speaker,
Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge I am a bit of a football fan--not much of an expert, but a fan--and I know that from time to time a play will be called and a quarterback will follow all the offensive line moving to the right of the field and follow behind them and appear to be handing the ball off to a running back behind the offensive line, but actually the quarterback has the ball, turns around, and goes the other way. It is called misdirection. And that is what is happening on the floor, as we speak.
I understand why my colleagues don't want to talk about the President's actions. I understand why the Members on the other side don't want to talk about actions that we consider to be considerably outside what was intended by the national emergency powers given to the President. So I would like to get back, if I may, though, to the issue at hand.
I want to just read something.
``We will vote on a resolution to reverse the President's ill-advised national emergency declaration that funds the construction of a border wall using money that Congress has appropriated and the President has signed into law for other purposes, such as military construction. . . .''
``By declaring a national emergency, the President's action comes into direct conflict with Congress' authority to determine the appropriation of funds--a power vested in Congress by the Framers of our Constitution in Article I, Section IX. That is why this issue is not about strengthening our border security, a goal that I support and have voted to advance. Rather, Mr. President, it is a solemn occasion involving whether or not this body will stand up for its institutional prerogatives and will support the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution.
``Throughout our history, the courts have consistently held that, `Only Congress is empowered by the Constitution to adopt laws directing moneys to be spent from the U.S. Treasury.'
``For the past 65 years, the courts have determined the boundaries of Presidential authority, vis-a-vis Congress, under the doctrine of Youngstown Steel Sheet & Tubing, the 1952 Supreme Court case which reversed President Truman's seizure of U.S. steel companies during the Korean war. As Justice Robert Jackson explained in his profoundly influential concurrence in that case, the question of whether a President's actions are constitutionally valid should be determined by examining the source of the President's authority, and in this concurrence, the Justice goes through three scenarios in which he assesses the President's power.
``According to Justice Jackson, when acts taken by the President are against the express or implied will of Congress, the President's power is at its lowest ebb. Mr. President, President Trump's declaration clearly falls in that category.
``Now, the President rests his declaration on the National Emergencies Act, and that act fails to define precisely what constitutes an emergency, but there is a commonsense rule that we can apply. It is a five-part test that was used by the Office of Management and Budget under former President George Herbert Walker Bush to determine whether or not requested funding merited an emergency designation under our budget rules. Under that test, a spending request was designated as an emergency only if the need for spending met a five-part test. It had to be necessary, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and not permanent. Now, whether or not one agrees with President Trump that more should be done to secure our southern border--and I do agree with him on that goal--his decision to fund a border wall through a national emergency declaration would never pass all of this five-part test.
``Another concern that I have with the President's declaration is that it shifts funding away from critical military construction projects. We don't know which ones. We have not been able to get a list, but this could have very real national security implications. And, again, I would note that the military construction appropriations bill incorporated projects recommended by the President and his Department of Defense, was passed by both bodies and signed into law by the President.
``Let me emphasize once again that the question presented by this resolution is not whether you are for a border wall or against a border wall. It is not whether you believe that border security should be strengthened or whether it is sufficient. It is not whether or not we support or oppose President Trump. Rather, the question is a far more fundamental and significant one. The question is this: Do we want the executive branch now or in the future to hold the power of the purse--a power that the Framers deliberately entrusted to Congress?
``We must stand up and defend Congress' institutional powers as the Framers intended that we would, even when doing so is inconvenient or goes against the outcome that we might prefer.
``I urge my colleagues to support the resolution of disapproval and our Constitution.''
Now, some might think that was authored by a Democrat, but it was not. Senator Susan Collins of Maine issued that back in March of 2019 when we considered the resolution for the first time, and, frankly, she is far more eloquent than I.
I think I will let it stand at that, Mr. Speaker, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. MORELLE.
Mr. Speaker, I don't disagree with my colleague that we all grow weary. I never do of spending time with him on the floor. I just want to acknowledge that.
I would say a couple of things, because there is a lot to unpack here. But fundamentally this resolution should--I think he read it--say that, Pursuant to the National Emergencies Act, the emergency declaration finding is hereby terminated. That is actually in the law.
What we are doing in this resolution that was already passed by the Senate and it, hopefully, will pass--not only the rule, but the underlying resolution as well--and do exactly what the law does. There is no need to change the law.
We may disagree, and obviously we do, about whether or not the President's use of the provisions violates the Constitution. I say, yes, my learned colleague differs, but what is clear is we are using this within the context of the existing law, and so that is why we are here.
I think the one difference, however--and I apologize, I have to put my eyeglasses on to see this fine print--but one of the differences that I note is--and I may have noted this earlier, I apologize if I am repeating myself--but we now have a specific list of projects. So when I look at, for instance, in Virginia the Joint Base Langley-Eustis in January of 2020 is expected to have dollars for the construction of a cyber-ops facility. That is money that is being redirected.
If you look at in Oregon, Klamath Falls, replacing fuel facilities at the base there. If you look at--I mentioned the child development center, I believe. In Florida the Fire/Crash Rescue Station at Tyndale Air Force Base. The list goes on and on.
We now have more evidence of the fact that these projects are vitally needed by the military and by members of our Armed Forces and advance the security interests of the people of the United States and around the world.
So we have details now of, in my view, what amounts to an unconstitutional move of dollars without congressional approval. We have that. We are acting, once again, in conjunction with our colleagues in the Senate to end the national emergency declaration by the President. While we might agree or disagree as to whether or not that is really an emergency, and we might disagree or agree on whether or not the use by the President of the act in the way he did is constitutional.
What is incontrovertible is that the current law allows us to do what we are doing today to end the emergency, and that is really the question before us.
Mr. Speaker,
First of all, I should note that I probably shouldn't get into a football argument with the distinguished gentleman from Georgia, with its long history of that sport. I also shouldn't do it because if my wife is watching, she will be very unhappy that I used a sports analogy, which she decidedly does not like.
But just to torture the analogy a little more, because Mr. Woodall raised it, misdirection does have a quarterback, but the whole point is to fool the opposition.
I think that is what, frankly, some of my colleagues here today were trying to do, is to fool the American public about what this resolution before us is all about. I think that is unfortunate because the resolution on the floor is critically important.
Before I close, I want to compliment my friend. I do enjoy this. I know this is a serious topic--and no one should see it as anything else--but I always appreciate his passion, his intellect, his eloquence. It is always a joy to be with him in the Rules Committee and here on the floor, and I so appreciate that.
Mr. Speaker, I do want to thank all of my colleagues in the Rules Committee for their support of S.J. Res. 54, relating to a national emergency declared by the President on February 15, 2019, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and a ``yes'' vote on the previous question.
The material previously referred to by Mr. Woodall is as follows:
At the end of the resolution, add the following:
Sec. 2. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the bill (S. 820) to strengthen programs authorized under the Debbie Smith Act of 2004. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary; and (2) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 3. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of S. 820.
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