Representative Adam Schiff (R-CA), speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, declared that President Trump’s insistence that he may invoke “emergency powers” to secure funding and construction of a southern border wall a “non-starter.”
“Look, if Harry Truman couldn’t nationalize the steel industry during wartime, this president does have the power to declare an emergency and build a multi-billion-dollar wall on the border,” said Schiff.
“So, that’s a non-starter,” Schiff added.
Truman was unable to nationalize steel mills during the Korean war during a labor strike on the mills, though both Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt did use emergency powers to suspend habeas corpus without Congressional approval and to place Japanese-Americans in internment camps, respectively.
Schiff instead insists that the president move to end the government shutdown amiably.
“I think what the president needs to do more than anything else; he’s painted himself into a corner on this thing, is figure out how he unpaints himself from that corner. We need to reopen the government, we need to put people back to work.”
Schiff then echoed the words of Senator Doug Jones (D-AL), who was on the same program before Schiff, who called the shutdown “political posturing.”
“We can’t allow this continual process… that if I don’t get what I want, if I don’t get what I don’t have the votes for, if I don’t get what the county doesn’t want, I’m just going to shut down the government,” said Schiff. “If you reward the President with that kind of tactic, then we are going to see every year the President shutting down the government, and we can’t afford to do business that way.”
The current government shutdown is currently in its 15th day, with no clear end in sight.
Image via screen capture from video source.