Senator Angus King (I-ME) said Wednesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that President Donald Trump did not have the power to close government agencies created by Congress.
Host Anderson Cooper said, “What did you make of the president threatening to withhold federal aid and the governor and threatening the governor’s career and suggesting federal law basically begins and ends with the White House?”
King said, “Well, there are two problems and you just touched on one of them, the statement we are the law. That reminds me of the king of France. You know, I am the law. We don’t have a king here. We don’t have a dictator. And the very fact that he thought that that he said that we are the law, that was pretty chilling and it tells you the direction that their thinking is, is going in.”
He continued, “The second piece is these are funds that are coming to Maine by virtue of laws passed by Congress and signed by president. An appropriations bill is a law and that gets back to the original point I was making, that there’s something much deeper and more important going on here. And that is the executive, the presidency pulling the power of Congress, which the framers put there for a reason, to protect our freedom, pulling it into his or her hands. In this case, it’s President Trump.”
King added, “The basic responsibility of the president is spelled out in article two of the Constitution. And here it is and it’s a responsibility, it’s not a power, it’s a responsibility. the exact words are, see that the laws are faithfully executed. That’s in the end of article two of the Constitution. See that the the president is to see that the laws are faithfully executed. It doesn’t say, see that the laws he likes are being faithfully executed, or see that the laws that he doesn’t like aren’t going to be faithfully executed. That’s his job and that’s what the Constitution assigns to him. The Constitution assigns to the Congress the power of the purse, the power to pass laws. If he doesn’t like the Department of of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, come to Congress and get us to repeal it. The presidency does not have the power to just arbitrarily say, we don’t like this department we’re going to knock it out.”
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