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Dear Group, If you are confused over the legal authority Trump claims for his emergency declaration, you are in good company. The media have done a poor job of explaining. It’s messy. Below I’ve copied a portion of Doug Muder’s article “A Fishy Emergency Threatens the Republic.” It offers the clearest explanation I’ve seen of the whole complicated delegation of authority issue. (Muder’s whole article is worth reading if you have the time. Just click on the title.) Congress still has a chance to weigh in, but there’s a catch. As originally passed in 1976, the National Emergencies Act allowed what is known as a legislative veto: Congress could override the President’s declaration if both houses agreed to do so. This is, in fact, likely to happen. The Democratic House will pass a resolution against the emergency fairly easily, and the Republican Senate will probably follow suit. (In order to do so, all 47 Democrats and 4 Republicans will have to agree. Mitch McConnell can’t prevent the resolution from coming to the floor, and it can’t be filibustered.) However, in 1983 the Supreme Court (in regard to a different law entirely) found legislative vetoes to be unconstitutional. As laid out in the Constitution, Congress passes laws and the President has an option to veto them. Congress can delegate its power to the President (as it did in the National Emergencies Act), but it can’t switch places with the President and give itself veto power over his decisions. As a result, Congress can still undo the President’s declaration, but it requires a joint resolution, which is then subject to a presidential veto. A two-thirds majority of each house would then be necessary to override the President’s veto. This is currently considered unlikely, because not enough Republicans are willing to go against Trump. So the most likely scenario goes like this: Congress passes a joint resolution against the emergency, the President vetoes it, and Congress fails to override the veto. The gist is this: In 1976 Congress passed and President Ford signed the National Emergencies Act. The intent of Congress at the time was to offer the president a way to act expeditiously, but with Congressional oversight. Congress essentially said: “If you, Mr. President, use this act in a manner the Congress deems out of bounds, then we have a means of quickly withdrawing our approval. We can take back the authority under this act with a simple majority vote of both houses of Congress, a vote of that, once called for, cannot be blocked by leadership, filibustered, or even vetoed by you. In 1983 the Supreme Court under Warren Burger (a conservative…for the time…nominated by Richard Nixon) in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, an unrelated case, made it much harder for Congress to rein in an autocratic President the way Congress had intended. By nixing the “legislative veto,” the Supreme Court handed the President far more power than Congress intended in 1976. Does McMorris Rodgers even understand the separation of powers laid out in the Constitution? Republicans, are usually anxious to shout “Executive Overreach!” Does that extend to McMorris Rodgers’ “positive disruptor?” Does she understand how Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to thwart the Constitutionally mandated Congressional “power of the purse” produces a constitutional crisis over the powers of the Legislative and Executive branches of government? If Trump vetoes a majority vote to stop his usurpation of Congressional power, will she vote to override? You could ask her: “Conversation with Cathy” Town Hall — Wednesday, February 20 When: 9:45 a.m.- 10:45 a.m. Where: McIntosh Grange, 319 S 1st St. Rockford, WA 99030 “Conversation with Cathy” Town Hall — Wednesday, February 20 When: 12:15 p.m.- 1:15 p.m. Where: Fairfield Community Center, 304 E Main St., Fairfield, WA 99012 “Conversation with Cathy” Town Hall — Thursday, February 21 When: 2:30 p.m.- 3:30 p.m. Where: Medical Lake City Hall, 124 S Lefevre St., Medical Lake, WA 99022 Space is limited at all three events. Town halls are first come, first serve. Details can be found on McMorris’ website. Again, I encourage you to read Doug Muder’s whole article. Keep to the high ground, Jerry |
Cathy’s Comfort Zone
Dear Group,
McMorris Rodgers is back at it this week with “Conversations with Cathy.” As always, her “Conversations” appear on short notice (KXLY Sundayfor “town halls” on Wednesday and Thursday this same week). As always, they are scheduled during the workday, 9:45A, 12;15P, and 2:30P, and they are scheduled in towns that are clearly in her comfort zone: Rockford (pop. 477), Fairfield (pop. 616), and Medical Lake (pop 4957). (She spent her teen yearsoutside of Kettle Falls [pop. around 1600 currently].)
The “Conversations” all come with the caveat, “Space is limited at all three events. Town halls are first come, first serve,” as if throngs of people were going to appear, something that never, ever happens in these places. She draws a crowd only when she offers to meet with constituents in the evening, in a hall in a population center, and with some advance notice so folks who are neither self-employed nor retired have a chance to attend.
What does she gain at these gatherings? The adoration of her most dedicated rural fans and a chance to pretend she engages in broad outreach to her constituents. Of course, that is only if one measures outreach by numbers of small gatherings rather than numbers of attendees…
Anyone within reach of these tiny events ought to go, record the proceedings for the rest of us and ask some questions. For the times and places of these gatherings on Wednesday and Thursday, see below.
A question for McMorris Rodgers: Will you vote in favor of Trump’s authority, under the guise of an emergency, to expropriate funds he was denied by Congress or will you vote to defend the Constitution and the Congressional power of the purse?
From Doug Muder’s Weekly Sift:
Once again, conservatives in Congress and in the courts will face a challenge: Will they support Trump, even at the expense of what was once considered a core conservative principle? Over the last several decades, much hot air has been blown about defending “the Constitution” and “the vision of the Founding Fathers”. It goes virtually without saying that neither the Constitution nor the Founders ever envisioned or endorsed a process like this: Congress refuses to fund a presidential project, the president seizes the money, both houses vote to condemn that seizure, but it goes through anyway.
Any congressional Republican who refuses to override Trump’s emergency declaration or his subsequent veto can never again claim to be a defender of the Constitution, and should never again be allowed to invoke the Founding Fathers without hearing about this betrayal of their vision. Any judge who allows this travesty to play out can likewise never in good conscience claim to be an “originalist” or “strict constructionist” rather than a partisan judicial activist.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
From the KXLY Website:
“Conversation with Cathy” Town Hall — Wednesday, February 20
When: 9:45 a.m.- 10:45 a.m.
Where: McIntosh Grange, 319 S 1st St. Rockford, WA 99030
“Conversation with Cathy” Town Hall — Wednesday, February 20
When: 12:15 p.m.- 1:15 p.m.
Where: Fairfield Community Center, 304 E Main St., Fairfield, WA 99012
“Conversation with Cathy” Town Hall — Thursday, February 21
When: 2:30 p.m.- 3:30 p.m.
Where: Medical Lake City Hall, 124 S Lefevre St., Medical Lake, WA 99022
Space is limited at all three events. Town halls are first come, first serve.
Details can be found on McMorris’ website.
CMR on the Funding Bill
Dear Group,
On the front page of the Spokesman yesterday (Feb. 13) was an article entitled “Region’s Lawmakers Weigh in on Border.” First, understand the bill is about funding the government through September 30, not just the border, but Trump apparently has the attention of both the media and the populace to where funding the wall is treated as the only thing worth discussing.
If you have the patience to dig through the article you find:
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, said she will review the proposal once it’s released before she makes a decision how to vote.
“It sounds like a missed opportunity to secure our border and provide long-term certainty for DACA recipients,” she said. Lawmakers negotiating for adeal tentatively agreed Monday night to provide nearly $1.4 billion for border barriers and keep the government funded for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.
Perhaps by the time you read this she will actually have cast her vote. At this writing I cannot locate a copy of the written bill. It is possible the Representatives and Senators who will need to vote yea or nay before midnight Friday to avoid another shutdown do not have the text yet either.
McMorris Rodgers lament is worth dissecting. “A missed opportunity to secure our border” is code directed to the base, Trump’s and her base, the folks who believe Trump’s narrative of crisis and fear. CMR cannot afford to get out of step with these people. The other part, the “missed opportunity to…provide long-term certainty for DACA recipients” is slippery. By “long term certainty” she does NOT mean citizenship or a path thereto, a glaring point she admitted at her Green Bluff town hall on May 29, 2018. As I wrote in that post, “She wants credit for being sympathetic to the Dreamers, but her sympathy only extends to a select few…and keeps citizenship out of reach even for them.” The idea that DACA recipients should be offered a path to citizenship is anathema to Republicans. Some Republicans can bear letting DACA people have some form of legal status, a mechanism allowing them to stay and work in the U.S., but citizenship and voting rights? Never.
Remember when George W. Bush and others were wringing their hands, suggesting they needed to court hispanic voters? Demographers predict a white minority in the United States. The answer was either to attract a part of this new brown majority to the Republican Party or to buck the demographic trend. Trump chose the latter…and now Republicans really cannot afford to offer voting rights to the people they have demeaned and shunned.
I predict there will be no citizenship path for DACA recipients before there is a Democratic majority in the House and Senate and a Democratic president. (And then watch the Republicans claim the Democrats are “playing politics.”)
Let’s watch how McMorris Rodgers finally votes. Will she cast a symbolic vote against the compromise funding bill? That would show her base how committed she is to funding the wall and telegraph her willingness to shut down the government again. Or will she vote for the compromise? We’ll see. Either way, always remember what she means when she speaks of ” long-term certainty for DACA recipients.”
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. I predict a shutdown will be avoided, but McMorris Rodgers will vote against the compromise as a show for her base….
CMR’s “Waste of time”
Dear Group,
We’re being lulled. McMorris Rodgers’ justification for voting against bills (since passed by the House and waiting on McConnell’s desk), bills that would end Trump’s shutdown, should be met with knee-slapping, howling derision.
Her justification from her website for voting against H.J.Res 1:
For bills to reach the president’s desk in a divided government, both parties must work together to responsibly govern. It’s time to make deals. Unfortunately, Democrats signaled through this legislation that they would rather waste time on bills the Senate won’t consider and the president won’t sign. Speaker Pelosi pledged this Congress will be ‘bipartisan and unifying.’ She should stick to her word and come to the table to negotiate.
Wow. Think about that statement for a moment. How many dozens of times during the Obama administration did she vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act? Never once did the repeal she voted for stand a chance of being signed into law, yet she voted for repeal time and time again. Were those votes a “waste of time?” She applies “waste of time” at her convenience. Is it a “waste of time” to reopen the government? Is it a waste of time to vote to pass bills already passed by the Senate in the previous (115th Congress), bills McConnell now refuses to bring to the floor in a blatant display of partisanship?
Is she enjoying the Trump shutdown? Apparently. It hasn’t curtailed her travel or kept her in D.C. to work on a solution. She was among the honored guests at the MLK Day Annual Commemorative Celebration at the Holy Temple of God in Christ at 806 W. Indiana Ave. Sunday afternoon during MLK weekend.
She and most (but not all) of her Republican cohort is content to sit by and watch the country slowly unravel as their petulant child of a President holds the country hostage hoping to get his way.
It keeps appearing in the news that Republican Congresspeople are receiving high volumes of calls, texts, emails and tweets in support of the shutdown. The zealots are activated. We need to Republican Congresspeople aware there is a cost to their complicity. Contact the folks who are supposed to represent you. Encourage those who want the country to function again and register your disapproval with those who sit by, conveniently dismissing actions by Congress to end Trump’s grandstand. Here are the numbers:
CMR:
Spokane Office (509) 353-2374
Colville Office (509) 684-3481
Walla Walla Office (509) 529-9358
D.C. Office (202) 225-2006
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
D.C. Office (202) 224-2621
Spokane Office (509) 624-9515
Yakima Office (509) 453-7462
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
D.C. Office (202) 224-3441
Spokane Office (509) 353-2507
Richland Office (509) 946-8106
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)
D.C. 202-224-6142
North ID, 208–664-5490
Sen. James Risch (R-ID)
D.C. 202-224-2752
Coeur d’Alene 208-667-6130
Rep. Russ Fulcher (new R, ID)
(202) 225-6611
Then call Call/Email Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and ask him to bring the House-passed bills to the Senate floor for a vote. He needs to let the Senate do its job. Phone: (202) 224-2541.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
What Underlies Trump’s “Compromise” Offer
Dear Group,
Always remember the Republican’s biggest fear: that brown people become citizens and able to vote. Trump, one hopes, jumped the gun by activating the nativist base to get elected. He thought this base would be all he needed to push his anti-immigration crusade over the top and exclude for the long term the threat of brown people becoming citizens and voting against Republicans. His nativist base (and the greater Republican Party) is now doubly invested. They have taken ownership of the full-on, anti-immigrant brand, anti-refugee, anti-legal immigration (except Norwegians), and anti-DREAMER, the latter a group for which many have sympathy. For many seeking refuge and many who have lived among us, contributed to society, and paid taxes for years (but are not yet citizens) the Republican Party is now an adversary. The result: the Republicans are ever more dug in and ever more determined never to offer citizenship for the DREAMERs or any brown people. Lacking compassion…or decency…, the Republicans use their threats to deport the DREAMERs as a bargaining chip. “We won’t kick them out of the country, at least for a few years, if you….” or “We might offer the DREAMERs some sort of complicated ‘legal status’, if you…” This is hostage taking.
Listen and read carefully every time you hear a Republican offer anything that might help the DREAMERs. You will never see in their proposals an offer of a functioning pathway to citizenship. The DREAMERs came to this country through no fault of their own as children and have lived here as tax-paying citizens for years. Breitbart, Ann Coulter, and the Republican base are already screaming “Amnesty!” at Trump’s Saturday offer of the best compromise he can muster: a promise not to go forward deporting the DREAMERs for three years. “Amnesty” for the screaming Trumpian base is somehow construed as an issue of “fairness,” that somehow letting the DREAMERs out of bondage is “unfair” to those who, as adults, came legally. (How very Old Testament of them. . Apparently, the “sins of the fathers [Exodus 20:5],” their parents bringing the DREAMERs to the U.S. illegally [often by overstaying a visa], are to be visited on the children,,,and the children punished…with deportation from the only country they have known.)
Last summer McMorris Rodgers helped craft a bill within her own Party (of which she was then a supposed “leader”) to strike an immigration bargain. It failed spectacularly, 121 Yea to 301 Nay with 112 of her fellow Republicans voting “Nay.” Her bill offered a select group of DREAMERs “permanent legal status,” She seemed surprised at her mini-townhall at Greenbluff when I asked her to clearly state the bill offered no path to citizenship. She’s in a tough spot. She’d like to groom her sympathetic mom brand, but her base might turn on her if she offers any long term help to the hostages her Party so delights in threatening with deportation. [For more on CMR and her bill read CMR’s Immigration Duplicity.]
The DREAMERs deserve a path to citizenship. They will not be offered one until the Presidency and the Congress are out of the hands of Republicans. Until then Republicans will use the DREAMER’s issue to rile their nativist base.
Trump’s Saturday “compromise” offer to get his border wall funding was dead before it was all out of his mouth. A three year lull in his and his Party’s effort to deport the DREAMERs, keeping them from one day voting against Republicans, this lull offered as a “compromise,” is an insult to our intelligence. Furthermore, for all his pandering to them he can’t even get his base to dampen their desperate xenophobia.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Remember Republican hand-wringing in the early years of Obama’s presidency, the Jeb Bush and other relative centrists talking about wooing the hispanic vote? One wing of the Republican Party worried out loud that demographic trends would make white men a minority and corrode their support? The other wing of the Party decided to buck those trends by demonizing and excluding immigrants. That wing won. Trump’s election, riding in on the votes of racist, anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party, marked a takeover from Republicans who at least mouthed words suggesting unity and compromise. Trump flipped the switch to the most rabid, denigrating, partisan politics we’ve seen in our lifetimes. This has long brewed on the right. The question of our time is whether Trump and the Stephen Millers of his Party flipped the switch before enough groundwork was laid. Can they leverage their success into a durable power grab?
Mitch
Dear Group,
Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has served as the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate since 2015. He was first voted into the Senate in November, 1984, seated on January 3, 1985. That election was a squeaker. He would have lost if the 0.6% of the vote that went to a Socialist Workers candidate had gone to his Democratic opponent. He leapt to the Senate at 42 years of age from a position as “Judge/Executive of Jefferson County”, Kentucky. He is currently 76 years old. He is up for re-election in 2020. (Sources: Wikipedia and Ballotpedia.)
Ballotpedia reports McConnell’s net worth increased by 512% from $3,734,414 in 2004 to $22,841,026 in 2012 while the American citizen experienced a median yearly decline in net worth of -0.94% in the same period. (You can see his top 5 contributors to his political campaigns at Ballotpedia.)
For me, Mitch McConnell stands out as the most partisan and least statesmanlike of highly placed politicians in Congress. His statement in 2010 after the 2008 election of Barrack Obama, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” stands out for me, but not nearly so much has his unprecedented months-long stiff-arming of Merrick Garland, the moderate judge Obama nominated to the Supreme Court. For that latter act McConnell already deserves a special place in hell.
Now McConnell is refusing to bring to the Senate floor bills already passed by the House since this Congress opened on January 3, bills that would re-open most of the government, appropriations bills the contents of which passed the Senate by a voice vote last December (but need to be taken up again, since we’re in a new Congress, in order to present them to Donald Trump).
McConnell is in a delicate spot. In 2014, his last election, he won with 56% of the vote. (There still are Kentuckians who are Democrats!) McConnell’s base, we have to imagine, is increasingly Trumpian. He must fear doing anything that angers Trump. That certainly includes presenting Trump with bills he would have to veto to keep the government shut down. Worse, if Trump vetoed, the Congress might have to consider a veto override. Each and every Representative and Senator would then be on record as having voted for or against continuing the Trump shutdown. This is pure partisan politics.
But there is more. Evidence continues to mount that Trump colluded with the Russians to swing the 2016 election. McConnell, in his steadfast pursuit of the Republican agenda, has consistently defended Trump against such accusations. Explore that by reading “Trump is doing immense damage. He has a hidden helper.” an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Greg Sargent on January 14th.
Once again here are the numbers to call and express your ire over Congressional dysfunction on the issue of the shutdown. It is their job to present legislation to the President and to override (or not) his veto if it comes to it. (
CMR:
Spokane Office (509) 353-2374
Colville Office (509) 684-3481
Walla Walla Office (509) 529-9358
D.C. Office (202) 225-2006
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
D.C. Office (202) 224-2621
Spokane Office (509) 624-9515
Yakima Office (509) 453-7462
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
D.C. Office (202) 224-3441
Spokane Office (509) 353-2507
Richland Office (509) 946-8106
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)
D.C. 202-224-6142
North ID, 208–664-5490
Sen. James Risch (R-ID)
D.C. 202-224-2752
Coeur d’Alene 208-667-6130
Rep. Russ Fulcher (new R, ID)
(202) 225-6611
Then call Call/Email Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and ask him to bring the House-passed bills to the Senate floor for a vote. He needs to let the Senate do its job. Phone: (202) 224-2541. Reports are that McConnell’s phone lines have been jammed. They need to stay that way.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
What makes it “Partial”?
Dear Group,
Why a “partial” shutdown? Why isn’t it a “full” shutdown? That’s a pretty basic question for which I didn’t have an answer. In a media ecosystem of soundbites I often find the basic information necessary to understand what’s going on is left out of the discussion.
The federal fiscal year (the “year” established for accounting purposes) runs from October 1 of one year to September 30 of the next. If Congress hasn’t “appropriated” (authorized the money to be made available) to the fifteen departments of the executive branch before October 1 then the money starts to run out. In 2018 the October 1 deadline passed but funding continued on a series of “Continuing Resolutions” until December 21. (A continuing resolution says the departmental funding will continue at the same level as the previous appropriations bill until some specific date.)
The shutdown is “partial” because the 115th Congress (that just ended) passed some appropriations bills (not just continuing resolutions) during 2018 that provided money to six of the fifteen departments for fiscal year 2019 (which ends September 30, 2019). Those departments have money with which to function. In fact the appropriations bills that were passed and signed by Trump for those six departments cover roughly 75% of the discretionary budget. The departments that have money already include the Pentagon (Department of Defense—a big spender) as well as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor.
The other nine departments received no more money from the Treasury after the continuing resolutions ran out on December 21. As a result they have to cut back services and require employees deemed “essential” to work without a paycheck (but with the hope they will get their money later). You can read a fairly comprehensive fact sheet on what our current record-breaking partial shutdown affects here. There is a superb wikipedia article on the current shutdown with a lot more background and detail here.
All this brings me to two rhetorical points: 1) Six departments are already funded under appropriations bills passed in 2018 AND there are appropriations bills covering the other departments on Mitch McConnell’s desk, sent there by the House. On what ground does he refuse to bring them to the Senate floor, apart from his own petulance? 2) The current shutdown might never have happened if the Department of Defense were not already funded. Can you imagine the wailing if Trump were responsible for demanding the military to serve without pay?
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. I wonder what percentage of voters were taught about this process in high school Civics (or learned it on their own). I was certainly fuzzy on the details… One way to look at the current partial shutdown is to use it as an opportunity to learn some of the detail of how the government budget process is supposed to work.
P.P.S. Rush Limbaugh is touting the partial shutdown as a way get rid of some of what he considers the surplus, do-nothing federal workers, a classical Libertarian canard.