In an article published last year in the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, attorney Patrick Thronson identified 160 laws giving the president emergency powers, including the authority to: ![]() Invoking those emergencies can give presidents broad and virtually unchecked powers. Even as he did so, he left the state of emergency declared in that executive order intact - because at least two other executive orders rely on it. In May, President Obama rescinded a Bush-era executive order that protected Iraqi oil interests and their contractors from legal liability. Last week, Obama renewed a state of national emergency declared in 1995 to deal with Colombia drug trafficking, saying drug lords "continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States and to cause an extreme level of violence, corruption and harm in the United States and abroad." Instead, many emergencies linger for years or even decades. The 1976 law requires each house of Congress to meet within six months of an emergency to vote it up or down. Most of those emergencies remain in effect.Įven as Congress has delegated emergency powers to the president, it has provided almost no oversight. Since 1976, when Congress passed the National Emergencies Act, presidents have declared at least 53 states of emergency - not counting disaster declarations for events such as tornadoes and floods, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents. In his six years in office, President Obama has declared nine emergencies, allowed one to expire and extended 22 emergencies enacted by his predecessors. The Obama administration has said declaring a national emergency for Ebola is unnecessary. If invoked during a public health emergency, a presidential emergency declaration could allow hospitals more flexibility to treat Ebola cases. and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on," said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor at Princeton University. ![]() "What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers - to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will. Tuesday, President Obama informed Congress he was extending another Bush-era emergency for another year, saying "widespread violence and atrocities" in the Democratic Republic of Congo "pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States." Bush - and renewed six times by President Obama - forms the legal basis for much of the war on terror. WASHINGTON - The United States is in a perpetual state of national emergency.Īn emergency declared by President Jimmy Carter on the 10th day of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 remains in effect almost 35 years later.Ī post-9/11 state of national emergency declared by President George W.
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