In a politically charged speech delivered Saturday from his Bedminster, NJ resort, Trump said he would pursue one executive order and three presidential memoranda to federal agencies aimed at cutting taxes for workers by the end of the year. , and expanding unemployment benefits at a reduced rate, renewing a moratorium on benefits during the pandemic, and postponing payments and student loans for student loans until the end of the year.
But Sasse, who emerged as an early GOP critic of the president, despite constantly voting for the White House’s legislative priorities, came together with Democratic lawmakers in doubt about the legality of Trump’s maneuvers.
“The pen-and-phone theory of executive legislation is unconstitutional,” Sasse said Saturday night. “President Obama did not have the power to unilaterally rewrite immigration law with DACA, and President Trump does not have the power to unilaterally rewrite the tax law. Under the Constitution, that power belongs to the American people who act through their members of Congress. ”
Sasse’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s tweet Monday.
The president has repeatedly attacked members of his own party in recent months, writing negatively about Congressional Republicans on social media as they show a willingness to express public disapproval of his actions.
In July, Trump directed Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, after the two lawmakers criticized his decision to penalize the sentence of his longtime informal political adviser Roger Stone.
Two weeks later, the president luts out by Rep. Liz Cheney, the third-ranked Republican, who criticized her Conservative colleagues for not being supportive enough for the White House agenda.
Sasse has been sparring with Trump since the days of the president as the forerunner in the 2016 Republican primary. He mocked then-candidate Trump as a “megalomaniacal strong man” during a speech in the House of Representatives in December 2015 that revealed he would not vote for Trump, calling him “creepy” in February 2016, and saying he did not thought Trump “had core principles” in March 2016.
Following Trump’s election, Sasse POLITICO said in May 2017 that the new president ‘comes from a reality TV world’, acknowledging that he ‘had a lot of fears about whether or not that kind of world is really what we want for our children. . ”
More recently, Sasse condemned the aggressive spread of seemingly peaceful Protestants outside the White House in June so that Trump could support a photo opportunity while posing with a Bible at a nearby church. “There’s a fundamental – a constitutional – right to protest, and I am against ending a peaceful protest for a picture on which the Word of God is treated as a political prop,” Sasse said.
And later that month, Sasse was among the Republican senators who pressured the White House on the president’s knowledge of reported Russian fines paid to the Taliban for killing US troops in Afghanistan. ‘I want to understand how it is conceivable that the president did not know. How is that possible? “Sasse said.
Still, Trump formally supports Sasse’s bid for a second term in 2020, tweetjen last September that the New York senator “has done a wonderful job as a representative of the people of Nebraska. He’s great with our vets, the military, and your very important second amendment. Strong on Crime and the Border, Ben has my full and total attachment! ”
