The National Emergencies Act grants the president no power at all. It is the key to a vault.
Congress has written roughly 150 statutory authorities that unlock only once a national emergency is declared — powers to seize property and commodities, control transportation and communications, organize the means of production, restrict travel. Before 1976 the vault stood unlocked and a president could reach into it at will. The Act locked the door, handed the president the key, and gave Congress a way to take the key back.
A declaration under the Act, 50 U.S.C. §§ 1601–1651, is a statement about the state of the world. What follows are the actions it authorizes, and those are the things that reach individuals. The declaration must be renewed each year to stay alive, and Congress is required to meet every six months to consider whether to end it. Those meetings are essentially never held.
More than fifty declared emergencies are in force today. The oldest dates to 1979.
The Act as passed let Congress terminate an emergency by concurrent resolution — a vote of both chambers that never reached the president's desk. In INS v. Chadha (1983) the Supreme Court held that device unconstitutional, and in 1985 Congress replaced it with a joint resolution, which does go to the president.
That single word changed the arithmetic. Ending an emergency now takes two-thirds of both chambers over a veto — a higher bar than enacting the statute that created the power in the first place. The mechanism designed as the easy check became the hardest thing Congress can do.
Emergencies should be fairly self-evident and as such be able to garner consent from the people's representatives.
Repair the structure rather than replace it. The declaration is where Congress has leverage, and two changes restore it: a default time limit, on the premise that an emergency is by definition temporary, and a reversal of the resolution mechanism, so that Congress votes to approve an extension by simple majority under expedited floor procedures instead of mustering two-thirds to end one.
Read only as a constraint on the president, that reform is a loss for the executive. It is better understood as the opposite — an emergency response that carries an Article I imprimatur has a political legitimacy that a unilateral declaration cannot supply.
Emergencies that never end embed themselves in the policy firmament, and each year they persist makes ending them harder.