Most oppose Trump ‘emergency’ to build border wall, says CBS

Bloomberg

Two-thirds of Americans oppose President Donald Trump declaring a national emergency if Congress doesn’t offer up the funds he wants to build a wall on the US-Mexican border, a CBS News poll shows.
Most survey respondents —73 percent —also said they want Trump to continue negotiating while keeping the government open, rather than forcing another shutdown when funding expires again in mid-February. A congressional committee is trying to reach an agreement on border security after the record 35-day government
closing ended January 25.
Trump has said in recent days that negotiations are a “waste of time” because Democrats don’t support wall funding, and he said in an interview that on CBS that another government shutdown or declaring a national emergency remain viable options. “I don’t take anything off the table,” Trump said in the interview. “I don’t like to take things off the table.”
He said separately that “on the 15th we have now set the table beautifully because everybody knows what’s going on
because of the shutdown.”
Republican lawmakers appearing political shows pushed back on the prospect of an emergency declaration, saying they want the border funding issue to be settled through the normal appropriations process.
Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that while Trump has the power to declare an emergency, it would likely have to be decided by the courts. “What we’d like to do is, do it in the appropriation process,” Shelby said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We have shown we could do it.”
Even so, Shelby said as long as Trump and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remain
at odds over allocating money for new wall construction,
“the chances of us reaching an agreement are slim.”