McConnell’s life just got rougher as he dosen’t want the class of 2020 on the record. The House is moving forward on the Joint Resolution to terminate Trumps “Mission Accomplished” wall funding National Emergency, when Congress already told him no.
The concurrent resolution under the law is not eligible for filibuster in the Senate and McConnell will have to bring it to a vote within 18 days if it being submitted to the Senate. (I assume it won’t have a problem passing the house.) McConnell will not be able to “Garland” the resolution.
Now in reality I think it will pass the House, have a good chance (better that 50/50) of passing the Senate. Trump will veto and the Senate will not override with the needed 2/3rds majority. If it doesn’t then I think the House will take up a legal case (in addition to the ones already filed in California and DC) as Trumps actions being unconstitutional exercising of the power of appropriations.
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10 bucks says McConnel ignores it anyway. Whose gonna make him? What repercussions would he have if he didn’t? We all know he’s for flagarantly violating norms if there’s a political benefit, so why wouldn’t he just give the House the finger?
Let pols be “on record”. (they will be in the House too, if this actually gets voted on.) It won’t change a thing come election day. Ditto the Green Deal. Dems will win Dem seats and Rs will win R seats, and the divide will go on and on.
You are correct that this will not end the shutdown unless twenty Republican Senators vote for it…but this vote serves two purposes.
It is a message from Nancy Pelosi to everyone who voted D in 2018 to put restraints on the Trump Regime that the House leadership is following their wishes
It forces Republican Senators who are up for re-election to chose between a vote that drives away their base or a vote that drives away moderates.
Well… this appropriation of funds via executive fiat isn’t going as well as expected.
It included $3.6bn (£2.8bn) in unspent military construction money, as well as $2.5bn (£1.9bn) in counterdrug funds and $600m (£462m) from an asset forfeiture account – the latter two not dependent on the emergency delaration.
But a spokesperson for the House appropriations committee told the Congressional Quartely (CQ) magazine that only $85m (£65m) remains in the counterdrug account, wiping out more than $2.4bn Mr Trump intended for the wall.
In order to recoup that money, the Pentagon is planning to redirect money from other programmes in order to bring the counterdrug account back up to $2.5bn, so that Mr Trump can then move it again into border wall funding.
“The Department would need to reprogramme additional funding into the account to reach the up to $2.5 billion that may be required for border security support,” Defense Department spokesman Christopher Sherwood told CQ.
Any repurposing of funds by the Pentagon, however, would require authorisation from the leaders of the four congressional committees which oversee the department.
So the TL;DR version.
About a 1/3 of the money that the President was counting on is already gone. In order to get it to where he wants it he has to go to Congress.
My understanding is that many of these projects already have contracts and at this point pausing the project for next year would simply make it more expensive when the project resumes.
McConnell will allow for purple state senators and those with a conscience to vote against the Emergency- knowing it will be vetoed and Trump will get his way. In the end I think the Dems will swing Gardner, Murkowski and Collins- and then there are a number of wildcards…
Rubio, Tillis, Rand Paul, Alexander, Moran, McSally, Romney, Lee…all who have expressed strong tut-tuts about Trump’s move. I’d love to see Romney be the 51st vote against Trump’s move.
