1. United States
2. Pa.
3. Letter

Invoking or threatening to invoke extraordinary emergency powers is not just a constitutional concern — it is a direct financial one for American taxpayers. When a president threatens to deploy federal forces, invoke the Insurrection Act, or otherwise escalate federal authority inside U.S. states, the cost is immediate and measurable. Federal deployments require emergency appropriations, overtime pay, logistics, transportation, equipment, legal support, and long-term readiness funding. Even when these actions are only threatened, agencies are forced to prepare, diverting resources from their actual missions and burning taxpayer dollars in the process. These costs do not disappear when tensions cool. They compound. Guard activations, DHS mobilizations, federal law-enforcement surges, and legal defenses tied to emergency actions all come out of public funds — often with little transparency and no meaningful congressional authorization after the fact. The result is billions in discretionary spending triggered not by necessity, but by political escalation. Taxpayers did not consent to funding domestic power plays. We did not ask to bankroll show-of-force governance, nor should we be forced to absorb the economic consequences of threats that destabilize states, markets, and public trust. Emergency powers are meant for genuine crises, not rhetorical leverage. Congress has both the authority and the obligation to act as a fiscal backstop against executive overreach. That includes enforcing limits on emergency declarations, demanding cost accounting for deployments and preparations, and refusing to normalize spending that bypasses democratic oversight. Unchecked emergency powers do not just erode constitutional norms — they quietly drain public resources while delivering no benefit to ordinary Americans. Fiscal responsibility requires drawing a clear line now, before extraordinary powers become an expensive habit taxpayers are forced to underwrite indefinitely.