Termination of National Emergency Declared By the President on February 2019

Floor Speech

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, the President's emergency declaration is, in fact, a power grab to go outside the bounds of the law and get what he failed to achieve in constitutional legislative process. After failing to convince the American people and Congress to pay for his ineffective, wasteful, multi-billion-dollar concrete wall, the President is now trying a desperate end run around Congress with his unlawful emergency declaration.

The President is declaring an emergency over a crisis that does not exist. The statute only applies to national emergencies that require use of the armed forces for military construction projects ``that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces.'' The border wall is not a military construction project. It does not require the use of the military.

The immigration law is the responsibility of the Federal immigration enforcement agencies, not the military.

The President's declaration violates Federal law and that is the crisis. This is a crisis, a crime against our Constitution. It is an assault; it is a rape, what the President is doing now, against the Constitution, against this legislative body.

I am just in another world that I, as a constitutional, strict constructionist, am on this side of the aisle on an issue like this.

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