Trump's Border Emergency Survives as Veto Override Falls Short

(Bloomberg) -- The Democratic-controlled House lost a veto override vote that aimed to halt President Donald Trump's national emergency plan to fund a border wall, as Republican support for the president handed him a new victory following the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

The 248-181 vote Tuesday was short of the two-thirds majority needed to overturn Trump's first veto, as most Republicans voted against the resolution despite the public unpopularity of the emergency declaration. The vote kills Democrats' legislative effort to rein in Trump's plan to fund a wall on the border with Mexico, and it demonstrates the president's enduring influence over GOP lawmakers.

“Today, congressional Democrats attempted to block the president's National Emergency Declaration - they failed,” the White House said in a statement on Tuesday evening. “Democrats continue to ignore the reality that our porous southern border is a magnet for illegal immigration, child smugglers, human traffickers, drug cartels, gangs and many other criminals.”

The vote came after Sunday's massive win for the president when Attorney General William Barr announced that Mueller hadn't found evidence that the president or his campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election. Barr also said Mueller hadn't turned up enough evidence to justify a charge of obstructing justice.

The House and Senate had voted earlier to disapprove Trump's plan to use an emergency declaration to divert military funds to build the wall. It was a rare bipartisan rebuke of the president, as 13 House Republicans and 12 Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to adopt the resolution, H.J.Res. 46.

Yet those votes didn't come close to the two-thirds margin needed to survive Trump's March 15 veto, foreshadowing Tuesday's failed attempt to overturn the president's action. This time, 14 Republicans joined Democrats in voting for an override.

After the override was defeated, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas, who wrote the resolution, said in a joint statement that the House and Senate votes against the emergency declaration “will provide significant evidence for the courts as they review lawsuits.” A coalition of 16 states, led by California, sued the Trump administration last month in an effort to block the declaration.

“We will continue to review all options to protect our Constitution and our democracy from the president's assault,” Pelosi and Castro added.

Trump Issues First Veto on Bill to Block His Border Emergency

The failure of the override removes one roadblock from the administration's effort to secure significant border wall funding from a Congress reluctant to give it to him. After a 35-day partial government shutdown earlier this year over the president's demand for $5.7 billion in border wall funding, Congress agreed to provide only $1.4 billion for physical barriers.

The administration plans to use the emergency declaration to redirect $3.5 billion in funding from military construction projects and tap other funding sources that don't require an emergency declaration. In total, the administration hopes to have $8 billion available to build the border wall.

Pelosi had called on lawmakers from both parties to pass the resolution to prevent the president from circumventing Congress's constitutional authority over spending.

“This emergency declaration is nothing more than an end run around a majority -- a bipartisan majority -- of both the House and the Senate in complete disregard of our constitutional system of separation of powers,” said Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat.

Representative Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, said in backing Trump, “He has very clearly laid out the case for a declaration for a national emergency. There is a crisis at the border.”

Most of the 14 Republicans who voted with Democrats to block the emergency declaration have said that while they agreed with the president's call for border security, his method for securing funding set a bad precedent of executive overreach.

The president's declaration also lacks support among the public. A CNN poll conducted March 14-17 found that 50 percent of those questioned agreed with Congress's resolution disapproving the emergency declaration, while 55 percent said Trump shouldn't have vetoed the resolution.

To contact the reporter on this story: Arit John in Washington at ajohn34@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton, John Harney

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