The following is a statement from Pili Tobar, Deputy Director of America’s Voice, reacting to the Senate vote yesterday attempting to override President Trump’s veto of a resolution to stop his emergency declaration used to raid military funding in order to build a few miles of the border wall. The 53-36 vote in favor of overriding the veto failed to achieve the two-thirds support in the Senate needed to overturn Trump’s action.
Shame on Senate Republicans. This was yet another opportunity for Republicans to stand up for the Constitution’s separation of powers, for military families, and for their own constituents. Instead of fighting to keep military funds needed in their own states, the vast majority of the GOP again failed the test and bowed to the unilateral actions of a dangerously erratic President Trump.
Even during a week in which the dangers and corruption that plague Trump’s presidency are front and center and he’s unraveling before our eyes, most Republican Senators – including 2020 candidates Ernst, Gardner, McSally, and Tillis – hitched themselves to the mast of Trump’s sinking ship and voted in favor of his subversion of Congress and raiding of military projects in their home states.
If Republicans don’t stand up to President Trump now, they never will. That Republicans continue to embrace this president offers a depressing reminder of their lack of spine and a preview that, regardless of the consequences for the American people and their own constituents, they will continue putting politics and party over country