Contributor: Trump’s weaponization of ’emergency’ label comes to a head

In Washington today, the word “emergency” is a magic word; It unleashes powers that Congress never granted, suspends regular discipline, and embellishes bills packed with provisions that are too dubious to pass on their own. What was once meant to be a limited exception for genuine crises has become a routine pretext for government intervention—a means of increasing executive power and undermining the nation’s fiscal credibility.

Start with the boldest claim, and one Will check soon By the Supreme Court: That a president can impose sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) only by declaring that a half-century trade deficit constitutes an emergency.

Tariffs are taxes paid by Americans, and the Constitution gives Congress the power to tax. Yet the Trump administration argues that the president’s tariff power is beyond reproach because he alone is the designer of the emergency.

George Will of The Washington Post Cracks summarized Corrupt: A law reads as a license to move to reorganize the economy and gives the president “revocable authority to impose taxes … of any amount, and for as long as he chooses.” Amicus briefs from the political stream stress the simple point that the IEEPA does not allow this, and an emergency cannot be a long-term condition that coincides with increased American prosperity.

Congress, for its part, has effectively created a parallel budget from the emergency label. Whenever discretionary spending limits or pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) requirements threaten to hit, the label gets a little more. Use these and costs simply do not count against agreed limits or require offsets.

of the Best recent calculation Dominic Litt of the Cato Institute puts the cost of emergency spending since 1991 at about $12.5 trillion (adjusted for inflation). Add nearly $2.5 trillion more in interest on the related debt and the total is about $15 trillion.

Over the past decade, nearly one in every $10 in budget authorizations has worn the emergency tag. This is not a safety valve; It’s a standing job that has already swallowed even the meager savings promised by the Fiscal Responsibility Act two years ago.

What makes this exercise so easy? It is largely self-policing.

On paper, the Office of Management and Budget has a five-part test for emergency spending: it must be necessary, sudden, urgent, unexpected and not permanent. Congress rarely commits itself to demonstrating, by substance, that all five prongs are met. There is no neutral referee. Once “designated as an emergency” appears on the bill and the president agrees, the amounts are exempt from caps and PAYGO scorecards.

And because this budget label is separate from other special “national emergency” declarations under laws like the Stafford Act or the National Emergency Act, it quietly becomes a vehicle to fund ordinary projects. It’s such a procedural magic word that financial keepers lose it all.

Finally, even when there is a real crisis, there is also opportunity. Emergency bills move quickly, face poor scrutiny and become impenetrable tools for unrelated projects or things Congress would never pass otherwise. This dynamic undermined the 2012-13 Hurricane Sandy package and has been replicated in other disaster bills, not because the aid is illegal but because the speed and political cover-up allows for conditions to die in order.

Pandemic supercharged this pattern. Much of the $1.9-trillion American rescue plan had little to do with COVID-19. Only a small portion went directly to health measures. Hundreds of billions have funded unrelated legislative requests, such as $350 billion for state and local governments whose revenue has already been raised, and massive education and social welfare expansions designed to last well beyond the pandemic.

It was the emergency label that exempted that spending from budget rules, allowing lawmakers to bypass a list of permanent program requests under the guise of temporary relief. It has long-term implications, with the shutdown in part making some “emergency” measures — such as the expanded Obamacare premium tax credit — permanent.

Abuse of emergency labeling is no longer open. The interest charges on the debt resulting in additional spending detract from the main functions of the government. Americans face “emergency” tariff spending. The next real crisis will come with less room to run if we continue to burn through manufactured credit.

A republic that treats emergencies as its ruling philosophy is a republic that lives without protection. We need to put the word back in its place: as describing something that is rare, reviewable, temporary and worth paying for.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with The Creators Syndicate.