VOA常速英语:大限将至 边境墙问题依然无解

“Where walls go up, illegal crossings go way, way down. I will get it built”, an unwavering president still at odds with an unwavering House Speaker. “There’s not going to be any more money in the legislation.” So far, no deal has been reached by a bipartisan bicameral conference committee tasked with finding a compromise on border security before Friday when US government funding expires once again. But President Trump holds a wildcard: his authority as commander in chief to declare a national emergency and bypass Congress altogether.

And I don’t think anybody questions his legal authority to declare a national emergency. Democrats say an emergency declaration is unwarranted and unwise. It’s when the president interferes that there’s a problem, so my advice to the president, you don’t want to shut down the government, if you don’t want to have to declare a national emergency which I am opposed to and I don’t think will happen, stay out of it. Some powerful Republicans are also uneasy. Because the national emergencies that have been issued in the past have not been contentious, pretty sure that this one would be. Trump is undeterred tweeting quote, the wall will get built one way or another. In the abstract, the president’s authority to declare a national emergency is not in question. It turns out that the federal statute books are actually littered with hundreds of places where a president can declare national emergencies in various contexts.
But there is a catch: The situation must be sudden and dire. A true crisis, could be a natural disaster, could be a foreign invasion, something like that where the need to act quickly was so important that the president would need these emergency powers. Because there just wouldn’t be enough time for Congress to convene. Observers note that America’s border security flaws have been debated for decades. I think a lot of Americans look at this skeptically and say what has changed between the beginning of the president’s term and now that makes this such a dire emergency. Trump is expected to explain his thinking later Monday when he visits the border city of El Paso Texas.
Michael Bowman VOA News Washington.