White House pressures Senate GOP to back Trump’s emergency declaration

The White House on Wednesday chastised Senate Republicans who are considering joining Democrats to block President Trump’s emergency declaration to secure funding for a wall along the southern border.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pushed Republicans to “do your job” ahead of a looming vote on a resolution that would terminate the president’s emergency and set Trump up to issue the first veto of his presidency and blamed lawmakers for failing to invest in border security.

{mosads}”If you had done what you were elected to do on the front end then the president wouldn’t have to fix this problem on his own through a national emergency,” Sanders said on “Fox & Friends.”

“The president has the absolute authority, in fact he has a duty to call a national emergency to fix the crisis that we have going on at our border,” she added.

The Senate is scheduled to vote next week on the resolution blocking Trump’s emergency declaration. A handful of GOP senators have publicly said they will vote for it, ensuring its passage, but it remains to be seen just how many Republicans will side with Democrats.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who will vote for the resolution, said he expected at least 10 Republicans could vote to block the emergency.

A number of lawmakers, including Sens. Jerry Moran (Kan.), Todd Young (Ind.), Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Neb.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Mike Lee (Utah) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), have all have expressed constitutional concerns about the emergency declaration.

The measure already passed the House, but neither chamber of Congress is likely to have the two-thirds majority required to override a potential veto.

Sanders on Wednesday portrayed the use of executive authority as a necessary move, citing new data that showed a spike in apprehensions and denials of people attempting to enter the United States in February.

“If that doesn’t define crisis I don’t know what does, and that’s something that we have to address,” she said. “Congress should’ve fixed this problem. That president tried multiple times to get Congress to work with him to address the crisis. They failed to do so, and now the president has to do what is absolutely necessary and what is right and that is to declare a national emergency and fix the crisis at the border.”