(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Several Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, reintroduced the Wildfire Smoke Emergency Declaration Act on Wednesday, which, if passed, would allow President Joe Biden to declare a “smoke emergency.”
Although the bill would appear to be in response to recent Canadian wildfires that have impacted air quality up and down the mid-Atlantic and in several other regions bordering the U.S.’s northern neighbor, Merkley submitted similar legislation in the previous session of Congress.
The bill defines “smoke emergency” as a “significant decrease in air quality due to wildland fire smoke in one or more states.”
The bill does not mention any measurement for air quality, or a minimum limit to allow an emergency declaration. In fact, it even allows the president to declare the emergency preemptively if necessary, according to the Daily Caller..
State-level officials also could request the president declare the emergency and release funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to build “smoke shelters.”
“It’s crucial that we make sure communities have access to all of the resources they need to battle blazes and protect themselves from the dangerous smoke and heat that has unfortunately become expected during these hot summer months,” Merkley said in a Wednesday statement.
Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., previously proposed legislation to prevent President Joe Biden from declaring any emergencies under the guise of climate change.
The Real Emergencies Act, proposed in June, clarified that Biden can not declare an emergency based on the purported climate crisis—a step which many Democrat lawmakers have called for.
Critics argue that granting additional emergency powers to Biden for a vague and ill-defined crisis would be a recipe for further abuse of power, something for which he and fellow leftists already have displayed a natural tendency.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus previously pushed Biden to use his emergency powers for a perceived climate emergency under the Defense Production Act and Trade Expansion Act.
The Biden administration has taken advantage of the executive office’s emergency powers for more than just climate-related reasons.
For example, the president attempted to use the COVID-19 pandemic as pretense to fulfill a progressive wishlist item by transferring large portions of student loan debt from borrowers onto the general public.
Even after the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional his efforts to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars for borrowers across the board, Biden has forged ahead with an even more brazen and ambitious loan-amnesty plan.
Democrats also pushed mail-in voting throughout the pandemic via several laws, hastily written and passed with little review, leading to a chaotic mess of an election with several instances of fraud.
