Senator Murray: Trump’s emergency declaration undermines democracy

Senator Patty Murray says she expects that President Trump’s emergency declaration to build a border wall to play out in the courts, but that Congress should also take action and hold a vote to challenge it.

“We will have a vote on this,” Murray told KIRO Radio. “But I’m worried that a number of Republicans are backing away from what they said just weeks ago, that they did not want the President to use his powers to usurp the powers of Congress.”

“I think fear, fear of their own elections in Republican districts and being primaried.”

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Trump recently declared an emergency to shift billions for the construction of the wall as a response to Congress not approving the funds, arguing that the construction is a national security necessity.

On a local level, Murray is not happy the president is looking to use money initially slated for military facilities to fund his border wall.

“We have military facilities here that drastically need repairs. They have worked their way through a very long process requesting funds through the Department of Defense,” she said. “If the president takes that money away, it puts them back years.”

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She’s also concerned that Trump is undermining democracy and setting a dangerous precedent by positioning the border wall construction as a national emergency.

“I am deeply concerned about the precedent setting of an emergency declaration of building a wall. Because the way this democracy works is people elect their representatives, and we get a budget request from the president. But we work that budget request through all year long and write our budgets and appropriations, we compromise, we fight for our constituents, and at the end of the day it is to be implemented.”

For Murray, the president is nullifying what she considers to be a crucial democratic process.

“If that doesn’t matter anymore — what Congress does — a president can be a dictator and say, ‘I don’t care what you did, I’m spending the money this way’ — that erodes the essential basis we have as country that we elect people who represent us and decide how our money’s going to be spent.”

“If we don’t like what they’re doing we can unelect them, but we have a representative democracy for a very good reason, and I don’t want to see that undermined.”

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