Rand Paul And Justin Amash-- Sticking It To Trump?

Rand Paul frequently makes constitutional arguments against Trump's behavior and huffs and puffs about voting against them... but in the end, he's a pretty dependable Trump enabler. Murkowski and Collins have bigger balls than he does. Yesterday the Bowling Green Daily News in his home state that reported that Paul announced at the Southern Kentucky Lincoln Day Dinner that he "can’t vote to give extra-Constitutional powers to the president."

In a speech that started off praising Trump's supposed accomplishments to the crowd of nearly 200 Republican officeholders and supporters, Paul surprised the room by interjecting his opinion that Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the Mexican border is a dangerous precedent. He said "I can’t vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress. We may want more money for border security, but Congress didn’t authorize it. If we take away those checks and balances, it’s a dangerous thing."

Since Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have already announced they're voting for the Resolution of Disapproval, Paul's vote would pass it-- as long as Schumer can force Arizona Democratic Trump ally Kyrsten Sinema to vote with the Democrats for a change.

Justin Amash (R-MI) already voted for the same bill in the House, one of just 13 Republicans who did:

• Justin Amash (R-MI)
• Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
• Mike Gallagher (R-WI)
• Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA)
• Will Hurd (R-TX)
• Dusty Johnson (R-SD)
• Tom Massie (R-KY)
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
• Tom Rooney (R-FL)
• Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
• Elise Stefanik (R-NY)
• Fred Upton (R-MI)
• Greg Walden (R-OR)

Amash is a pretty strict constitutionalist. On State of the Union, Jake Tapper asked him if there's a national security crisis on the border, which is what Trump is claiming.

Amash: I think there's a fair debate that there are big problems on the border. Some people would call it a crisis.

But that has to go through Congress. So, we have a legislative branch, Congress, that handles these issues. And the president doesn't get to decide that he can override Congress simply because Congress doesn't do what he wants.

I know that there are a lot of people in the country who agree with the president, and that's why we have Congress, so we can debate these issues. And if there were an emergency in the sense that the president is describing, there would be a lot more consensus.

When a house is on fire, nobody is debating whether they should go into save people or whether they should put out the fire. Everyone understands that's an emergency.

The fact that there's a debate going on here, and there is not consensus, indicates it's not an emergency in the sense that the president is describing, and he can't just go around Congress.

Tapper: You tweeted this week-- quote-- "If you think my job is to support the president 100 percent, then you don't understand what it means to be a representative in Congress. My job is to support the Constitution 100 percent" -- unquote.

Do you think that Republicans who are supporting this national emergency are abdicating their responsibilities to the Constitution?

Amash: I think so, yes.

I don't think that they are all intending to do that. I think many of them are making arguments. They're trying to make legal arguments. They say, well, Congress has passed legislation giving the president this power. So I don't think that they are thinking to themselves, oh, I just want the president to violate the Constitution.

But I think the president is violating our constitutional system. And I don't think Congress can grant legislative powers to the president by statute. You can't just pass a statute that says, the president now has appropriations power and bypass Congress.

I don't think that's-- that's allowed under our constitutional system. And the best check on the president's action is Congress. It's not the courts. Our system is not designed so that the courts are going to resolve these disputes all the time between the legislative branch the executive branch.

We have to protect our own power. And that's what I'm doing. And I'm hopeful many Republican senators will agree.