Republicans having a laugh over the laws they have been able to pass that screw ordinary Americans.
Credit by Chip Somodevilla/

Congress has offered a number of high-minded reasons for why it’s about to rebuke President Donald Trump over his national emergency declaration. It’s a dangerous precedent, said Senator Lamar Alexander. It violates the separation of powers, said Rep. Justin Amash. The president doesn’t control the money; under the Constitution Congress does, said Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

As principled as those complaints might be, they aren’t the real reason that Republicans in both chambers have joined their Democratic colleagues in decrying Trump’s desperate attempt to fulfill his boldest campaign pledge.

No, this fight is really explosive because it is about military construction funds, one of the tiniest parts of the defense budget—$11 billion swimming in a sea of nearly 700 billion defense dollars. The president wants to move a paltry third ($3.6 billion) of those military construction funds away from the projects to which they were assigned in order to […]