This idea sets a terrible precedent.
If this works, you can bet your bottom dollar the next time there is a Democratic President and the Republicans control one of the chambers of Congress, or both, we’ll be getting the “Climate Change National Emergency” measure with a half-trillion dollars of spending attached. Not to mention the “Health Care National Emergency” with a trillion-dollar single-payer scheme attached, followed immediately by the “Undocumented Immigrant National Emergency” multi-billion dollar amnesty/citizenship program.
This essentially end-runs around the Constitution to establish a borderline dictatorship.
In addition, if Trump does go this route, what will happen is the Democrats will fight with every legal delaying trick in the book. Not a dime will be spent on actual construction for months as it winds its way through the courts, and it’s incredibly unlikely significant portions of the wall will be finished by 2020 or 2024, at which point the Democrat President will declare the Emergency over, stop the construction and you’ll have a half-finished, graffitti-covered thing, forever linked to the Trump Presidency and the Republican party hanging over the South and the Border as the greatest white-elephant project in the nation’s history.
Make Congress pass a law.
Follow the Constitution.
“Make Congress pass a law.”
I totally get what you are saying and you may well be entirely correct.
But you can’t make Congress pass a law. They won’t...they can’t...it is impossible, with a country as broken and in throes of societal revolution as this one is, with a government that is wholly and completely opposed to the wishes of its own people, to get Congress to pass anything at all of substance.
The Constitution is dead.
The country is dead.
The way I understand “National Emergency” is that the President can use unallocated money for national emergencies. The President can’t unilaterally add or change taxes. So there is no way a single-payer scheme can be created by a President alone.
How long would a fight to the Supreme Court take? The Hobby Lobby case started in September 2012 when Hobby Lobby files a suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby in June 2014. So the Supreme Court could rule in favor of Trump in less than 2 years.