Wednesday on CNN’s “At This Hour,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) said if President Donald Trump attempts to use disaster relief funds to pay for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border there will be “a heavy price.”
Garamendi said, “Right now there’s $37 billion that the president could conceivably take out of communities around the nation, money that is desperately needed for economic development, for the waterways, for the ports, and even more important for flood protection in Houston and California and Puerto Rico and other places. We don’t want him to do that. I know for a fact that states and local communities are gearing up to file a lawsuit that the president is using a sham emergency to override the constitutional authority of Congress to appropriate money. Guaranteed lawsuit, guaranteed that some court is going to say, ‘yep, you’re right, we’re going to stop the president.'”
He continued, “If the president goes over and overrides the appropriation processes, overrides the authority of Congress by moving significant amounts of money from one program to another, there is a thing called we’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. President. You’re going to have to come back here for all of your programs for everything. So the president needs to be careful about that. He’s already learned what happens when you try to override the authority of Congress, that was a 35-day shutdown. I would hope he doesn’t want that again. In addition to that, some of those authorities and one that I’m particularly concerned about because I spent the last eight years working on the U.S. Coast Guard. The U.S. Coast Guard interdicts ten times the amount of drug that is the border patrol does on the Mexican border. There is a possibility of about a billion dollars that we’ve appropriated to rebuild Coast Guard cities which is essential to protect the coast of the United States. The Coast Guard provides a wall 1500 miles at sea. Now could the president take that money? He could. But I’ll guarantee you there would be tomorrow and when tomorrow comes, the president would pay a heavy price in other things he might think are important.”
Host Kate Bolduan said, “That sounds like quite a threat coming from you.”
Garamendi. said, “Well, take it for what its, I don’t say things idly.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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