Showdown: Senate votes to end Trump’s border wall emergency declaration

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In the midst of an impeachment firestorm initiated by Democrats a little too eager to remove a duly-elected president, the U.S. Senate voted Wednesday against President Trump’s border wall emergency.

The resolution to end Trump’s emergency declaration passed in the upper chamber 5441, with 11 Republican senators abandoning the president and voting alongside Democrats to set up a showdown of sorts, the Wall Street Journal reported.

By declaring the emergency in February, the president was able to shift $3.6 billion from the military toward border wall construction.

Trump was forced into the action by a dysfunctional Congress that refuses to address the illegal immigration crisis on the border, and he will certainly veto the measure.

Congress passed a similar resolution in March to cancel the national emergency and Trump vetoed it — there were not enough votes to override the president.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R – Ky., denounced Wednesday’s result as another “show vote.”

“Unwilling to work with the president and Senate Republicans on a long-term bipartisan solution for border security, Senate Democrats are making us repeat the same show vote again,” McConnell said Wednesday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The 11 GOP lawmakers voting against Trump include usual suspects: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Utah). The other eight defectors include Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tennessee) Roy Blunt (Missouri), Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Kentucky), Jerry Moran (Kansas), Rob Portman (Ohio), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) and Roger Wicker (Mississippi)

Collins, who is up for reelection in 2020, sponsored the resolution.

“Congress alone is empowered by the Constitution to adopt laws directing money to be spent from the United States treasury,” she said, according to the WSJ. “We must stand up and defend our role that the Framers very clearly set forth in the Constitution.”

The Pentagon released a list of the military construction projects delayed as a result of funding being shifted to the wall, stoking congressional ire, according to the WSJ.

Among projects targeted for cuts are six elementary, middle and high schools in the U.S. for military families and three more overseas. In addition, the Pentagon trimmed reconstruction funding for bases in South Carolina, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands damaged last year by hurricanes.

 

Democrats are using the issue to go after vulnerable Republicans like Collins up for reelection in 2020, as seen in remarks from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

“If my Republican friends choose to stand with President Trump on this vote, they will be supporting the president taking money from our military and their families to fund a border wall,” Schumer said.

The Democratic leader used stronger words ahead of the vote, saying it was “the surest and likely the only way to restore funding the president has stolen from our troops and military projects across the country.”

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