Tammy Baldwin: “I rise today because the people of my State are in pain. They are confused, and they are scared. This is all because of…”

“I rise today because the people of my State are in pain. They are confused, and they are scared. This is all because of a blatantly unconstitutional power grab from the President of the United States. While we have rightly seen this power grab blocked by the courts, it is only temporary, and the larger issue remains. Our Constitution is extremely clear: Congress--composed of people elected by the citizens of each of our States or districts--it is Congress that makes the law. In the Senate, those laws are almost always passed on a bipartisan basis, and after we work out our differences and pass a law, the President then implements the law. That is it. The Constitution does not say the President can implement just the laws he likes. The Constitution does not say the President can implement the laws just when he likes. The Constitution is crystal clear on this. But the Trump administration is ignoring the Constitution and refusing to implement the laws that Democrats and Republicans passed together, and it is trying to cut funding for absolutely critical programs. Every Senator and Member of the House of Representatives should be deeply concerned by that. I doubt my Republican colleagues would want a future Democratic administration to ignore annual appropriation laws. So a judge's eleventh-hour decision to temporarily block this power grab may have postponed the pain, but that is all it did--by a week.…”