Washington, D.C. – Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet today on the Senate floor spoke out against President Trump’s national emergency declaration on the border and urged his Republican colleagues to vote for the resolution of disapproval.
Below are highlights from Bennet’s remarks:
“This should bother everybody who believes in our system of checks and balances—who believes in the Constitution. Never has a president sought to enact a national emergency like this after Congress has said ‘no.’ Congress has the power of the purse in our Constitution. Every single senator should be voting to protect that.”
“Failing to fulfill his promise that Mexico would pay for the wall is not a national emergency. And if [President Trump] thinks it is, he should sanction himself for failing to keep his promise.”
“[President Trump] couldn’t get a Republican House and a Republican Senate to pay for the wall. So now he’s violating the Constitution to steal money that has been appropriated by this branch—by Congress—and he’s stealing that money from the Department of Defense—from our war fighters, from the United States military—to expropriate private land held by American farmers and ranchers—many of whom I assume are Republicans—through eminent domain…If any president tried to do that in Colorado, there’s not a person in our delegation that would support that.”
“We may never get another vote like this around here. This is going to be the time that each of us is going to decide whether we’re going to act to preserve these institutions for the next generation or whether we’re going to continue to degrade them in our mindless partisanship, and in this case, to somehow fulfill a promise the president never could keep. That would be a shameful day in the United States Senate.”
Bennet went on to compare the investments China is making in its infrastructure to the time wasted by the Trump administration during the recent government shutdown and fight over a border wall.
A video of Bennet’s remarks is available on Facebook, YouTube, and to download.