The Senate on Wednesday approved a resolution opposing President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports from Canada hours after his event championing “Liberation Day.”
Four Republicans – Sens. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky; Susan Collins, of Maine; and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, sided with Democrats in voting for a resolution that would repeal the emergency declaration that permitted Trump to levy taxes on Canada by citing deadly fentanyl flowing across the border. The measure, introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., passed the upper chamber of Congress by a 51-48 vote.
The resolution likely won’t survive the GOP-controlled House, but its passage was a small victory for Democrats looking for their best attack line before the midterms.
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Paul defended his decision to cross party lines in a speech on the Senate floor in which he quoted American revolutionary James Otis in saying, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” The senator said it was that longstanding principle that originated from the Magna Carta that sparked the American revolution and was incorporated into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers.
“And yet today, we are here before the Senate because one person in our country wishes to raise taxes,” Paul said. “Well, this is contrary to everything our country was founded upon. One person is not allowed to raise tax. The Constitution forbids it.”
Paul said the Founding Fathers “so feared the power of taxation that they gave it only to Congress.”
“I stand against the idea of skipping democracy, of skipping the constitutional republic, of rejecting our founding principles, not because I have any animus towards the president,” Paul said. “I do this because I love my country, and I want to see the division of power enabled such that it protects us all from the amalgamation of power into one person such that it can be abused. Another name for emergency rule is martial law.”
“This is a tax, plain and simple,” he said of Trump’s Canada tariffs. “Taxes should not be enacted by one person. So I will vote today to end the emergency. I will vote today to try to reclaim the power of taxation, the power of the tariff, to where the Constitution designated it should properly be, and that is in Congress.”
Trump called out Paul, McConnell, Collins and Murkowski in a post to Truth Social early Wednesday, saying that the four would hopefully “get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy.”
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“They are playing with the lives of the American people, and right into the hands of the Radical Left Democrats and Drug Cartels,” Trump wrote. “The Senate Bill is just a ploy of the Dems to show and expose the weakness of certain Republicans, namely these four, in that it is not going anywhere because the House will never approve it and I, as your President, will never sign it. Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS?”
The president said the four Republicans have been “extremely difficult to deal with” and “unbelievably disloyal” to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
The Democratic Party has been battling an identity crisis since November’s election resulted in Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House.
As Democrats strategized on how to emphasize Republican internal divisions, Kaine used one of the few ways the minority party could force a floor vote. Congress has the authority to overturn emergency resolutions.
The measure opposing Trump’s tariffs on Canada passed hours after the president hosted a “Make America Wealthy Again” event in which he announced an executive order instituting “reciprocal tariffs” on various countries.
“In the face of unrelenting economic warfare, the United States can no longer continue with a policy of unilateral economic surrender. We cannot pay the deficits of Canada, Mexico, and so many other countries. We used to do it. We can’t do it anymore. We take care of countries all over the world,” Trump said. “But we have to take care of our people, and we’re going to take care of our people first.”
“Today we’re standing up for the American worker, and we are finally putting America first,” he added.
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