Mike Pence's new proposal: Allow Trump to abuse emergency powers now, and maybe he won't later

Donald Trump underling and Vice President of The United States Mike Pence has apparently been floating a new bargain with Republican senators who have been considering voting to end Trump's transparently fictional "national emergency" on the southern border: What if you all, say, don't do that. And in exchange maaaaaybe Donald Trump will sign a future bit of legislation making it more difficult for presidents to declare similar bogus emergencies in the future.

Pence met Tuesday with a group of Republicans, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the sponsor of legislation to curb the president’s national emergency declaration power, as well as Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). Lee’s measure would require Congress to vote to extend a national emergency declaration after a period of 30 days. It is still undergoing some revisions, according to GOP senators.

Lee's measure is not expected to be taken up until after the March recess, if at all, and is still being revised by Republicans so it's not clear how strong or weak the final product will turn out to be, whether Senate leader Mitch McConnell will embrace it or scuttle it, or whether the whole thing is simply meant as theater. But what if, proposes the world's most boring Bond villain, Donald Trump theoretically agrees to sign that future bill reining in presidential power—so long as you allow him to get away with the dramatic abuses of power he's already committed to?

You can see the problems here. Not only has Trump himself not actually pledged to sign such a bill, and not only is it not clear what such a bill would actually contain, but everybody at this point knows that Donald Trump is a shameless liar who will "promise" you whatever you want, only to turn around the next day and claim that he never said what you think he said, no matter how many videotapes you have of him saying it. You would have to be Sen. Susan Collins-ish levels of gullible to take Pence's promises seriously.

Still, you can see what Mike Pence and other Republicans are getting at here. Republicans are currently very alarmed at the prospect that, using Trump's emergency declaration as precedent, a future Democratic president could invoke the same emergency powers to battle climate change, or gun violence, or other actual emergencies that conservative donors aren't eager to tackle. So Pence is offering up not a deal, but a doubling down: Allow Trump to flagrantly abuse his emergency powers, fellow Republicans, and let's craft new legislation making sure a future Democratic administration can't get away with doing the same thing to us after Team Trump is done making a thorough wreck of the place.

Yes, what a bold "compromise" on the part of Trump's highest-ranking enabler.

from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/2CdCsSc