Enzi, Barrasso vote to uphold Trump emergency declaration

By Nick Reynolds Casper Star-Tribune Via Wyoming News Exchange
Posted 3/16/19

Wyoming senators vote for border protection

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Enzi, Barrasso vote to uphold Trump emergency declaration

Posted

CASPER — During the eight years of the Obama administration, Wyoming’s senators spent considerable time criticizing federal overreach. But accusations of overreach by the Trump administration in attempting to leapfrog Congressional authority on funding a southern border wall failed to sway Sens. John Barrasso and Mike Enzi from voting Thursday against the president’s emergency declaration.
Barrasso and Enzi found themselves on the losing end of a 59-41 Senate vote to overturn a national emergency declaration President Donald Trump made last month in order to finance a border wall that Congress – which is tasked with the power of the purse – declined to finance. Twelve Republican senators joined Democrats in supporting the resolution, many saying they were uncomfortable with Trump’s effort to bypass Congress.
The House of Representatives had already passed the resolution with 245 ‘aye’ votes.
The vote, however, was largely symbolic. Trump took to Twitter after the vote to say he would veto the resolution.
Both chambers of Congress would need to reach a two-thirds majority – 290 people in the House, and 67 in the Senate – to override that veto, well beyond the tallies both managed to achieve.

The president has 10 days to decide on the fate of the bill. However, as of the close of business on Thursday, its fate was apparent.
“VETO!” tweeted Trump.
Reasons for the vote
Barrasso – a staunch supporter of the president – was long considered a “no” on the measure. Wyoming’s junior senator has concurred with the president that there is a crisis of rising violent crime, drug smuggling and human trafficking on the southern border, despite significant evidence to the contrary.

The legality of the emergency declaration was argued in a USA Today op-ed on Thursday penned by Attorneys General Ken Paxton, Curtis Hill and Jeff Landry, who argued the National Emergencies Act gives the president broad authority that was never defined by Congress, thereby “leaving it entirely at the president’s discretion to determine what constitutes such an emergency.”

“The president’s action is neither new nor extraordinary,” they wrote.

Enzi furnished the Star-Tribune with a similar statement after the vote on Thursday, saying he agreed with President Trump that the crisis on the border had risen to the level of a national emergency and that, ultimately, he believed that Congress provided the president with the power to act the way he had.
“I am disappointed that the House majority and Senate minority leaders put the president in a position where he believed he had no other choice but to issue an emergency declaration,” Enzi said.