Nancy Pelosi says a Democrat President could declare a national emergency on gun violence

  For several weeks now Donald Trump has been threatening to declare a national emergency at the Southern border so that he will be able to take money from the Defense Department in order to build a border wall. It is now being speculated that the President is going to declare a national emergency while signing the new spending bill.

  Regular readers of America’s Watchtower know that I am vehemently opposed to this type of governance by crisis and I am very much afraid of the precedence it would set moving forward. Even Barack Obama, who loved to use his pen and his phone to go around the Congress, did not push the envelope this far.

  And now, according to this story, Nancy Pelosi is warning people to be careful what they wish for because a Democratic President could play the same game and declare a national emergency in regards to gun violence. Here is more:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday issued a warning to Republicans poised to support President Trump‘s decision to declare a national emergency at the southern border: the next Democratic president, she said, could do the same on guns.

“A Democratic president can declare emergencies, as well,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. “So the precedent that the president is setting here is something that should be met with great unease and dismay by the Republicans.”

Pelosi noted that Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 students and faculty dead. She argued that the real national emergency is not illegal border crossings, but gun violence in the U.S.

“Let’s talk about today: The one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America,” Pelosi said. “That’s a national emergency. Why don’t you declare that emergency, Mr. President? I wish you would. 

“But a Democratic president can do that.”

  There you have it, exactly what I feared but why stop there once this cat is out of the bag?

   This reminds me somewhat of when Harry Reid used the nuclear option to get some of Barack Obama’s judicial nominees and cabinet appointees through the Congress. When Donald Trump won the Presidency the Republicans expanded the nuclear option to include Supreme Court nominees and more cabinet appointees and some Democrats have expressed remorse at having set that process in motion.

  You might agree with Donald Trump declaring a national emergency in order to build a wall but you must ask yourself if you think it is worth it to do an end-run around the Congress on this issue while knowing the Democrats will then use this same power to advance their agenda without the Congress.

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium