Talking to you, Republicans

Libby Emmons:

Blame our gutless Congress for Trump’s infinite national emergencies

The incessant inaction of Congress means that President Donald Trump is increasingly using emergency powers to get things done. 

From tariffs to immigration to cartels to crime, Trump has repeatedly cited the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to gain the authority to take action.

It shouldn’t be this way. 

Congress is perfectly capable of legislating on these issues and more, but its members are too consumed with staging victimhood pageants and crying on the Capitol steps to pass laws and demand their enforcement.

Take tariffs: Trump declared an emergency to impose them on many US trading partners, aiming to give America an upper hand — or at least equality — in global commerce.

That’s traditionally the job of Congress, which can also expressly delegate tariff authority to the president.

Instead, Congress has done nothing — it hasn’t taken charge, and it hasn’t handed tariff powers to Trump outright.

Members have just sat by and watched the matter grind its way through the courts. Sure, blame politics. Republicans hold the House and Senate, but their majorities are so slim that they’re afraid to use power lest they make a misstep and lose it.

Democrats are playing to far-left voters who will eat their own if they sense any deviation from party orthodoxy.

Compromise won’t keep anyone’s constituents happy — quite the opposite.

Once, Congress was all about finding common ground. Now it’s about holding a hard line and never giving an inch, on both sides.

Gutless.

[snip]

Americans gave Trump a mandate to deport illegal immigrants after President Joe Biden flung open the borders and signed all comers up for government benefits.

Biden wrung his hands, saying he couldn’t stem the tide, that he needed Congress to act. It didn’t.

Trump has shown that if members of Congress are too busy navel-gazing, posting TikToks and proposing self-aggrandizing bills that will never pass, he will rescue the country from chaos.

And Congress has still done nothing, content to let the fate of the nation be decided in the courtrooms of activist judges who see themselves as arbiters of global justice — not American laws.

[snip]

Unilateral executive action is not the ideal, we know that — it’s a concept we ditched when we threw all that tea in the harbor.

We are not a people who wish to be ruled by fiat.

As our founding documents established, we are meant to have our say via our representatives in the people’s House.

It’s up to our members of Congress to act on our behalf, so why won’t they?

We’d rather see our representatives act as if they have a stake in this nation beyond the next Election Day.

Governing by emergency, tackling one crisis after another with executive power, is not how our system was designed to work.

But our system is not working, as members of Congress show up on news shows more often than they show up for their constituents.

Trump is taking a huge risk by staking his presidency on handling each of these issues with emergency powers.

If he fails, we’ll know who to blame.

But if Trump succeeds — if immigration is curbed, if drug cartels are destroyed, if tariffs enrich us, if more Americans buy their own homes — we’ll know who deserves the praise.

Libby Emmons is the editor-in-chief at the Post Millennial.

Related:John Hinderaker, PowerLine:

Democrats Smash All Norms of Democracy

Our Constitution assumes a certain level of good faith on the part of people who participate in public life. It is not a system that can preside over a state of civil war. So throughout our history, there have been unwritten norms of conduct that grow out of a simple imperative: if we want to have a functioning democracy, a certain degree of cooperation between the parties is mandatory.

But in recent years, the Democratic Party has in effect declared a state of war against the rest of us. They have abandoned, one after another, the informal norms that allow our democracy to function. Rather than viewing Republicans as fellow citizens with whom they have disagreements, but with whom they share a common interest in the well-being of our nation, they see Republicans as enemies whose objects are entirely different from theirs and who, therefore, must be fought at every turn.

A case in point is the Democrats’ effort to block President Trump from staffing his administration. Historically, both parties have assumed that a president has the right to staff his administration with nominees of his choosing. Thus, while nominees occasionally have been controversial, routine staff decisions have gone forward without opposition. The Democrats have renounced this tradition, as this chart by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity shows:

Senate Republicans may finally have had enough of unprecedented Democratic obstructionism. The Democrats have required a lengthy process of cloture and final passage votes for every single nominee, grinding the Senate to a halt and keeping hundreds of qualified nominees from getting on the job now well into Trump’s term.

…. What to do about the Democrats’ obstructionism?

If Democrats don’t relent and let Trump get his team on the job, Senate Republicans should change the rules to limit the hours of debate and allow multiple nominees to be approved together. Trump deserves to have his team in place.

The Democrats’ conduct would be a scandal if they had a Senate majority. The fact that they are engaging in unprecedented obstructionism when they are in the minority should not be tolerated.

“Should not be tolerated”? Of course it shouldn’t, but that’s exactly what the Republicans have been doing since January. Senate Majority “Leader” Thune is expected to try to at least partially push past Schumer et al.’s obstruction of 148 civilian appointees this week, but (a) it’s entirely possible that two, even three RINOs will refuse to go along and thus thwart the effort; and (b) that still won’t address Emmons’ point: almost every one of the court cases blocking execution of Trump’s unilateral executive orders is grounded on a supposed lack of congressional authorization; nothing is preventing the Republican-controlled Congress from providing that authorization but Republican pusillanimity.