The supposed ‘danger’ of playing the ‘national emergency card’?

Readers, What do you think?

• Are you deeply concerned about the “plight” of those 800,000 federal employees who are ‘losing their homes’, whose children are starving, etc?
• Are you breathing a sigh of relief that President Trump is backing off declaring a national emergency ?

Really! What are your thoughts?

We have a few observations on these two topics…surprised?…and we want to share them…double surprise!?…

The supposed plight of the federal workers:

• going without a paycheck! No end in sight! Sleeping under bridges! Their children begging for the change in your pocket! EPA District Managers, standing at intersections, holding signs with the pitifully scrawled plea, “Buddy, can you spare a dollar?

Oh, the humanity!!!

• Our take: With universal knowledge that federal workers, likely to go unpaid for a few more days, or, yes, maybe weeks, will receive, in full their lost pay when the partial ‘shutdown’ ends, lenders are very unlikely to not work with their ‘customers’.

Those who ‘live paycheck to paycheck’? They, too, will not be shut out from getting a short term loan commercially, or be able to borrow from family to meet their needs in the short term. If they must pay “interest” on such borrowings, then isn’t that a price that must be paid for failure to manage one’s economic situation if only to a minimal extent.

Most other Americans experience similar temporary setbacks but Jim Costa and the QC Times aren’t there to cover their ‘tragic story’ and offer a tissue.

I come from a background in manufacturing. Those workers recognize that there are business cycles and various events that, at some point in their future, it may be necessary for their employer to temporarily suspend operations and they will be ‘laid off’ for a time. And, while they are usually eligible for unemployment compensation, they know that when the disruption ends and they return to work, they are not going to receive, IN FULL, the pay they lost! That is the lot of business cycles, seasonal businesses, labor disruptions.

And, for those “non-essential” federal employees, many are likely to be either enjoying their (eventually) fully paid vacation, or are working at other jobs, part-time or full.

A Declaration of a National Emergency…A Major Mistake For Trump To Do So:

If the president were to take such action…most objective experts agree he has the legal authority to do so, even if “Judge Napolitano”, Fox News, thinks not…it would set a terrible precedent, so the conventional wisdom goes.

Dana Perino, another Fox News political ‘expert’, agrees and even offers an ‘incisive anecdote’ to support her keen analysis. She reminded viewers of Harry Reid’s invocation of the “nuclear option” regarding the filibuster of judges. She grimly reminded us all how badly that turned out for the Democrats. “The precedent was thus set” and came back, big time, to haunt liberals , producing Supreme Court Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch!

Point well taken, Dana.

But, let’s take a closer look at Senator Reid’s “mistake”.

Agreed! We all believe that Reid made a big ‘goof’ with his “nuclear option”. But there are two things, perhaps, that many, even the big pundits and top ‘pols’ seem to overlook:

1) Years before Reid’s “ill-advised” exercise of the “nuclear option”, Republicans, then in the Senate majority, openly discussed invoking the same option. But, the ‘cooler heads’ warned, as Ms. Perino now does, that if they were to do so, it would set a ‘terribie precedent’, which a future Democrat majority would use with a vengeance against them!

And, so, wise Republicans…the “Gang of Eight”…, including the late, great John McCain, killed the idea, satisfied that they had, once again, ‘saved the Republic’.

But, thus what came to pass as soon as the Democrats did regain the Senate majority?

The ‘sainted’, Harry Reid, who had been among those who had warned of the awful damage to Senate decorum, national security, the Constitution itself, which would ensue from anyone invoking the dreaded “nuclear option”, INVOKED THE NUCLEAR OPTION!

Regardless how one might think about President Trump’s consideration of declaring a national emergency in order to get the border barrier, does anyone think that any future Democratic president (look at that lineup of would be candidates in 2020) would hesitate even one second, to declare a national emergency to get whatever socialist disaster they’ve dreamed of…not withstanding what Trump does????!! Huh?!

2) And, finally, the other point: We doubt there is any other GOP politician who would acknowledge the above, even to themselves, except Donald Trump (‘politician , not).

You can bet that President Trump knows full well that whether or not he uses the “national emergency” option to protect the border, the next Democratic president (God forbid) will not hesitate a nano-second to do so — to get whatever, socialized medicine, universal guaranteed income, free ‘whatever you want’, etc, etc… on the books. DLH

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