Heidi Alexander: “on Thursday, I suggested that President Trump has sufficient congressional authority to spend the $5.7 billion he asked…”

“on Thursday, I suggested that President Trump has sufficient congressional authority to spend the $5.7 billion he asked for in his January 6 letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman to build 234 miles of border wall without resort to a dangerous national emergency precedent that could upset the constitutional separation of powers that goes to the heart of our freedom. I believe the President has clear authority to transfer up to $4 billion among accounts within the over $600 billion defense budget in order to counter drug activities and to block drug smuggling corridors across international borders. On February 15, the President said that he plans to use $2.5 billion of this same transfer authority to build the 234 miles of wall along the southern border that he asked for in his January 6 letter. If he increases the transfer from $2.5 billion to $3.7 billion, along with the other existing funding authority that he has, he will have the full $5.7 billion that he said he needed. William E. Nelson, of New York University School of Law--one of America's foremost scholars of legal history--wrote an excellent op-ed last week that explained why it is so important that the President and the Congress should not, in Professor Nelson's words, ``invert the entire constitutional order where Congress appropriates and the President spends.'' I ask unanimous consent that Professor Nelson's article be printed in the Record.…”