If Gramm Rudman was unconst (and the Scotus said it was) I don't see how the national emergency law survives .... unless the scotus wants to play theoretical diddlylwinks by saying "congress can change it"
And McConnell will be all for amending the law to prevent misuse to just try and force spending congress won't allocate ... as soon as a dem is potus.
You know this law was meant to limit the powers of the president. The law allows the president to declare and emergency but also give congress the power to resend it.
I disagree that the law was ever about limiting the executive. Under the law the "emergency" exists when the president says so. Then to end the "emergency" congress must bipartisanly act to end the "emergency." The law is to allow congress not to act. It's lazy but the natural instinct is to have someone else to it for you, which is the path to totalitarianism ... or a monarchy. If the law was about anything else, it would provide an emergency automatically ends after some period of time unless Congress acts.
I think the laws really about the opposite. The revealing quote from Nixon - Frost is Nixon saying: if the president does it, it's not illegal.
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Nixon-say-When-the-President-does-it-that-means-that-it-is-not-illegal
I said the purpose of the law was to limit the president because previously there were a number of acts and court rulings under which the president might declare an emergency. The actual number was 470 which were mostly replaced by the new law. Some of these required Congressional oversight and others didn't. Some were perpetual and some had expiration periods. About the only thing in common to various statues and court rulings was the requirement to notify congress. This statue, unlike most of the previous statues, required the president to specify in detail the reason for the declaration, the actions planned, records of all orders and movement of funds, and periodic report to congress.
I agree the law stinks. The court actually removed veto power of the president making only a simple majority needed to resend the declaration. Unfortunately, congress passed and amendment restoring it. The act also gives the president far too much power without congressional approval.
The purpose of the law was to allow the president to act in a matter of hours in the case of a serious emergency where going to congress could take days or longer. It was also understood that the president would use this power for declarations that would have had unanimous support such as national disasters and attacks against the US such 911 and other matters in which passage by congress would have been a certainty. Until Trump, this was how the act was used. No president had used the act to subvert the will of congress.
Obviously, we need to change the law or future presidents will follow in Trump's footsteps which would be a transfer of power from congress to the president destroying valuable checks and balances. The problem is how do you get that legislation passed. Both sides are certainly drooling over the possibility of their man in the White House doing things that could never get passed by congress. Trump may well have opened Pandora's Box that has the potential of turning the government into an autocracy.
National Emergencies Act - Wikipedia
Mr. Flopper, thank you for background on what was and should be. It definitely sounds reasonable. However, it was also issue specific, and only one phrase nags at me, probably for the wrong reason, but here goes: "the will of congress." That would be fine except for several harsh things about this particular congress. This congress has a number of individuals who do not speak for the majority of the American people and who take swipes at the Constitution like a goat butts a dead tree. They brought in several fresh faces this term, but one of them until stringently spoken to was mouthing off about jews as though Old World hatreds were acceptable to mainstream America. One of them recently threatened to take away peoples' rewards for a job well done or an invention made useful by raising ONLY THEIR taxes to 70%, to copy the European theatre that taxes people to an early grave in its best light. Our forefathers set in place a system of economics that reward people who come up with good ideas and placed patents and copyrights to safeguard and protect their inventions, ideas, methods. and even words in the hands of the Library of Congress. Some of these innovative persons were not born with a silver spoon in their mouths and when wealth comes their way, they often do not know how to manage finances, become overly generous to relatives, hangers on, and even the best of good causes. In other words, we try not to bury the Mozarts of America in unmarked mass graves. That's a huge mistake to raise taxes on such people. And who are they? People who turned a muddy creek bed into a precious stone that sparkles in the hearts and lives of other people.
I do not have confidence in this particular congress any more than people had Richard Nixon after Watergate. I also am skeptical of a press that takes up the banner of one party just to smite the other, 98% of the time with malice aforethought, taking their clues from whoever is their favorite redistributor of wealth, which is what many framers intimated in their private letters, that they were worried if taxes were passed on the people, future generations would see this as a means of their own personal wealth and plunder the nation's treasury. What if the press changed its mind about the Democrat Party and went with the Republican Party? Neither option to me is good. The press needs to regain the public's trust, which it no longer has with the antics of putting words into the mouths of every conservative speaker who has something to tell the American public, and it always harks back to a "gotcha!" It was great for Woodward and others to make a name for themselves by taking out a President, but it wasn't great when they let go every last error go, covered up, reworded, redefined, and ignored justice obstruction for another President who could do no wrong, considering the personal benefits accorded them from their getting on the money train bandwagon. The Republican Party cleaned house promptly in 1973 and has never tried to do that again. Yet an ambitious-to-a-fault first lady was caught interfering with the lives of 900 of her husband's rival, and the press gave her a pass when she mumbled something like "I forget" to a Congress who sicks the present dogs of the press on a new President for 2 years based on a false charge by a Special Counsel who was reprimanded by the courts for doing the same darn thing a number of years ago. Many people do not know the Special Counsel appointed by Democrats destroyed the lives of innocent people back then, but the courts know it, and the popular press ignores it. The only trouble is, the popular press is now walking on thin ice as angry people cancel their subscriptions in answer for inanities leveled at innocent men who instead of violating laws as the press insists had clean hands. Kavanaugh is one of them. Donald Trump is another.
This congress has tried a new President in the press a month before he took office, in fact, the threat was made to impeach the very next morning after his bid for president was made public that he won. Many of us view that as essential prejudice: judging a man guilty or bad or the n-word or whatever the latest personal hatred may be, and in this case, prior to his placing his hand on the Bible and pledging that he would provide for the common defense with God as his witness. They've tortured the first lady for her modeling career choices, acceptable in the land of her birth for centuries, but suddenly taboo here in America by a party who celebrates a young woman's coming of age not with a Debutante party, but with her first abortion, which is paid for by taxes from people whose religious leanings teach families to love the sinner while hating the poor judgment exercised in a moment of youthful passion.
In short, this congress is not the same one as in years before. Democrats give their members a warning, never a censure. They do not behave in an equal manner for their counterparts on the other side of the aisle. I've heard the word "impeach!!!" screeched out by both sides, but when a congressman comes up with the jew-hating language used by one of them last week, the only censure you hear about is a little wrist slap and a well-rehearsed apology that came obviously from a list of things you have to say, and not from that person's black heart that will carry punishment for Jewish people for life in this country and in this congress.
This congress needs to be confronted on a number of ill-advised "wins" it claims for itself while damning the President's staff to the hell of being constantly verbally assaulted in public by an untouchable Congressman--untouchable because she's a woman, and furthermore untouchable because she is black and demands a free pass or she will start a riot somewhere in her district if anybody in charge says one single word of reprimand in public about her. Some of us think of that in terms of something a lot more sinister than mental illness. It is precocious hatred demanding unreasonable concession and it is racially biased with roots in wrongdoing against people who are no longer alive, and taken out on innocent people of the wrongs of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Here we are in the twenty-first century. The debt is paid in full by efforts to furnish free housing, free medical, free food, free job training, jobs for everyone, equal pay, equal justice, and no matter what good is offered, it is getting to the point of nothing given is ever good enough. Uh, well, yes it is. And if we are going to have people from every background in congress, we deserve just as much wisdom from them as we had when cooler heads prevailed in congress. Where is discipline? Is that something you can only demand from white males, discipline? No, it's something the American people want from whoever is making decisions in Washington, but it's not happening in the Democrat Party, and the Democrat Party is playing brain dead right now, and for some reason, the press that used to keep politicians on an even keel are losing respect because they are unfairly targeting Democrat hate targets which is always aimed at their conservative adversaries.
The Democrat Party needs to take another approach, and that would be one of getting along with and avoidance of eating the liver of Republicans and creating the false scenario that conservatism is all bad. Um, no, it's not. It also needs to make sure it does not deliver any more frivolous lawsuits, or it will be faced with the will of the people who will override the "will of congress," if it continues with ear plugs and blinders to the majority of the people of this land, selling out to a village approach unlimited which has been tried elsewhere and winds up with deprivation of the masses and power in too few committee hands. The government needs to back off a bit, imho, and let people enjoy the earnings the sweat of their brow produces, not put everything in the pot for jew-haters you do not censure. And Maxine Waters' method of using her Congress seat to punish the Executive Branch under closer examination is pissing on the separation of powers, as are the frivolous lawsuits closed-door committees in the Democrat Party are inflicting on the President, not giving him the chance to do his job for the American people's common defense. If a dog doesn't back down, his owner buys a leash, pushes a spiral in the ground, and takes away supper for a couple of hours. Don't push that onto Republicans with frivolous lawsuits, keeping in mind that if the overbearing character assassinations continue, the bad karma this provokes is very bad for this nation, blessed by the Creator and forged by the fire of liberty and equality.
So the 9/11 False Flag Worked, and the Greater Israel Project is Right on Track
I swam in my pool yesterday, March 20th earliest day of the year ever.
Zone1 VIDEO : A group of MOSCOW imperialists men attacked Jewish worshipers
The Iran Issue Shows Right Wing Media Can Really Be Immoral and Unlawful!
Please explain how the Iran War, the War on cheap energy, "benefits" America
