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(2:50 PM) Reed Disagrees With President, Congress On National Emergency Debate

Tom Reed

In terms of President Donald Trump’s national emergency, U.S. Rep. Tom Reed doesn’t agree with anyone involved.

Reed expressed disagreement with the president’s action last week taken to raise further funding for physical barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border. He said that the root cause and fault for the current national emergency lies with Congress over the past few decades for having delegated more executive powers to the presidential branch.

Instead of backing the Democrats’ resolution to block the national emergency, which Reed said he will not vote for due to the “actual text of it,” Reed wants Congress to rescind some of the modern delegations of authority Congress has given to the office of the president.

Reed maintained that Trump does have the legal grounds to pursue his national emergency funding, which is why the Corning Republican thinks Trump will be successful as his national emergency is tested through the courts.

“(Congress) is why I do believe the legal argument is there,” Reed said.

In his call for checks and balances, Reed said he’s met with members of the Problem Solvers Caucus that he co-chairs with Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-NJ, in the House. He said “true leaders” do not pass the torch on issues like this and said these executive powers should be rescinded as soon as possible.

“I disagree with that,” Reed said of the national emergency.

Reed thinks the $1.4 billion bipartisan compromise for funding of border security is just a start. While he wants to allocate more funding for the protection of the southern border, he wants to do so through Congress and more traditional funding sources.

He further commented that the overuse of executive power from recent presidents is the “institutional threat that the Constitution envisioned” if delegation of executive authority was to come to a head. Reed thought this type of situation is what the nation’s original leaders would have feared.

“I will attack extremism both on the left and on the right,” Reed reiterated. “The extremism if any is the failure of Congressional leadership.”

Additional topics discussed during Reed’s call with regional reporters can be found in Saturday’s edition of The Post-Journal and on www.post-journal.com.

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