Author Topic: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process  (Read 563557 times)

ccp

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1650 on: January 31, 2025, 06:33:20 AM »
Great post Doug!

Body-by-Guinness

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WSJ: Why Dems Rue Spending Spree Freeze
« Reply #1651 on: February 02, 2025, 08:55:44 PM »


Democratic States Are Wards of Washington

The uproar last week over the Trump administration’s short-lived pause on federal grants exposed how dependent Democratic states and cities have become on Washington handouts. Call it a welfare trap.

“Fifteen percent of our workforce are funded by those dollars,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy groused. A lawsuit brought by all 22 states with Democratic attorneys general plus the District of Columbia detailed a litany of programs funded by Uncle Sam. Washington state said it received $121 million last year for allergy and infectious-disease research. Illinois claimed federal Medicaid funds made up 60% of its 2023 spending on “critical health services.”

“Washington, do you realize the consequences of what you’ve done here? And do you really want us to not fund law enforcement?” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared. “Do you really want us to not fund roads and bridges?” What are New York state taxes for?

The freeze didn’t apply to most federal dollars that flow to states for social welfare, education and transportation since these are based on statutory formulas, though the administration’s original memo didn’t explain that clearly. On Wednesday the administration rescinded the memo after a judge blocked it.

Democratic states and their economies depend much more on Washington largesse than Republican states do. This year, New York received roughly $4,900 per capita from the feds and California $4,300—two to three times as much as Florida ($1,700) and Texas ($1,500). That’s because Democratic states provide more generous social welfare, which is increasingly funded by Washington thanks to regulatory changes by the Biden administration.
 
Democratic states also received a disproportionate share of the more than $1 trillion that Congress sent to state and local governments in 2020 and 2021 as pandemic relief. Between 2018 and 2022, federal dollars flowing to state and local governments increased by about $515 billion, more than the rise in Social Security and Medicare combined.

Most Covid funds are running out, though the Biden Federal Emergency Management Agency planned to hand out disaster-relief funds to states and cities for pandemic “emergency” spending through August 2026. This year’s Los Angeles city budget includes $208.2 million in FEMA Covid funds, including for housing vagrants in hotels. New York state’s budget this year includes nearly $3.5 billion in FEMA dollars for Covid “emergency protective measures” such as home test kits.

After blowing through federal pandemic largesse, states and localities are tapping FEMA to backfill their budgets. Congress, in turn, keeps backfilling FEMA. Rinse and repeat.

The Government Accountability Office last summer projected that the Covid “disaster” will be the most expensive in FEMA history. President Trump is right to call for shifting more FEMA responsibilities to states. Federal spending on disaster relief creates a moral hazard by reducing the incentive for states to invest in disaster preparation and mitigation.

The same goes for social welfare. States have less incentive to help lift people out of poverty since they receive more federal dollars if people stay poor. When you’re spending someone else’s cash, there’s hardly an incentive to spend it prudently. Medicaid, states’ biggest source of federal dollars, encourages inefficient spending.

States receive $1 to $3 from Washington for every dollar they spend on Medicaid—and $9 for lower-income able-bodied individuals covered under the ObamaCare expansion. Democratic states provide more-expansive benefits and easier eligibility to wring more money out of Washington. Some 36% of Californians are covered by Medicaid, compared with 19% of Floridians and 15% of Texans. The federal share of the Golden State’s Medicaid spending—nearly $120 billion—is more than Florida’s entire budget.

America’s welfare queen is New York. Federal dollars make up roughly 40% of the state’s budget. Some 44% of New Yorkers are covered by Medicaid or a quasipublic option for lower-income people including migrants. Thanks to a Biden regulatory waiver, the feds foot about 95% of this public option’s costs, about $11.7 billion this year.

Government, social assistance and healthcare account for nearly all new jobs added in such Democrat-run states as California, New York, Minnesota and Illinois. Their high taxes and excessive regulation have suppressed job creation by private businesses, so that government spending is now their main engine of employment growth. How long can this last?

Soaring pension bills for government workers are crowding out public services. Lawmakers have in turn hiked taxes, but the resulting population flight has shrunk their tax bases. All this has made them more dependent on Washington spending. Why should taxpayers in Houston and Jacksonville subsidize mismanaged government in Sacramento and Albany?

By slashing federal spending, Republicans in Washington could give progressive governments an impetus to reform and escape their welfare trap. Call it tough love.

https://apple.news/AlL9rvGR8T5S_AemeaufEsg

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1652 on: February 03, 2025, 06:19:01 AM »
Well reasoned and well stated.

DougMacG

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Biden redirected Inflatio Reduction Act money to battleground states
« Reply #1653 on: February 05, 2025, 09:12:01 AM »
“Musk should check this out: Biden directed almost half of the Inflation Reduction Act climate money spent last year to five battleground states. Who received that money and what did they do with it?”

https://twitter.com/JunkScience/status/1848730572044030120
« Last Edit: February 05, 2025, 12:41:10 PM by Crafty_Dog »

Crafty_Dog

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FO: Vought approved to OMB
« Reply #1654 on: February 07, 2025, 09:27:17 AM »
This

(1) VOUGHT CONFIRMED AS OMB DIRECTOR: The Senate voted along party lines Thursday to confirm Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought served as OMB director during Trump’s first term and is the founder of conservative think tank Center for Renewing America and a co-author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Vought has repeatedly criticized the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which prevents the president from refusing to spend appropriated funds, and has pledged to challenge the constitutionality of the law once in office.

(MARC:  Absolutely LOVE the idea, but has not SCOTUS ruled that Line Item Veto is unconstitutional?)

Vought was acting as an advisor to OMB when the Trump Administration announced a freeze on all federal grant and loan funding.

“Russ Vought may well be the most important man that no one’s ever heard of,” said Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, “He wants to take an agency that people outside of Washington haven’t even heard of and turn it into the nerve center and power center of the federal government.”

Why It Matters: The Director of OMB is one of the most powerful cabinet positions, and Vought is expected to play a critical role in realizing Trump’s vision for reforming the federal government. Vought’s early efforts with the OMB signal that he will not only aggressively pursue Trump's agenda to starve and dismantle parts of the bureaucracy but likely pave the way for a constitutional challenge to the Impoundment Act of 1974, which would greatly enhance the power of the Executive to resist congressional spending. - M.N.

Body-by-Guinness

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Half a Trillion in Illegal Congressional Spending
« Reply #1655 on: February 08, 2025, 05:15:41 PM »
I dearly hope we hear the names of those associated with this illegal spend and I don’t much care if some of the names are Repubs as they will likely all be Deep Staters of one stripe or another:

https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/02/08/the-us-treasury-spent-how-much-illegally-now-you-know-why-the-left-wants-to-stop-doge-n2185365

Body-by-Guinness

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80% on FEMA’s NC Outstanding Cases Resolved in 5 Days
« Reply #1656 on: February 09, 2025, 06:03:47 PM »
Nick Sortor
@nicksortor
·
6h
🚨 HOLY CRAP: Kristi Noem has announced FEMA has resolved 80% of Western North Carolina cases in just FIVE DAYS
INCREDIBLE!

I know Helene victims are SUPER grateful for this. They were abandoned for MONTHS.

BBG here: hey now, NC voted incorrectly in the last presidential election. How are “Progressive” Dems gonna be able to dish out regressive punishments to those that don’t toe the line if they can’t delay federal largess to those they seek to punish?

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1657 on: February 10, 2025, 08:44:49 PM »
"Warren’s CFPB has had its funds cut off as has USAID"

Is this accurate?   Does POTUS have this power?

DougMacG

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1658 on: February 10, 2025, 09:45:33 PM »
"Warren’s CFPB has had its funds cut off as has USAID"

Is this accurate?   Does POTUS have this power?

I don't know for sure but would like to think yes. Either way we have court challenges.

In the bigger picture I thought 4 years of Trump would only be a pause in the march to full Leftism but now I think this toothpaste can't be put back in the tube.

You can't unsee what's already been exposed and we're only a couple of weeks into it.

If not the executive alone, if it takes an act of Congress, a decision by the court or even a constitutional amendment to correct all this, then so be it.

Political suicide to stop this:
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2025/02/10/liberal-analyst-warns-dems-suicide-to-defend-usaid-n3799680
« Last Edit: February 10, 2025, 09:49:59 PM by DougMacG »


DougMacG

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Executive Spending Impoundment
« Reply #1660 on: February 11, 2025, 07:39:13 AM »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YvIIjK5xKg

No precedent for executive spending impoundment? Congress approved the money that Biden was withholding from Ukraine. No one questioned that Obama had the power to impound that. Hat tip VDH.

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: The Federal Spending Boom Rolls On
« Reply #1661 on: February 11, 2025, 07:53:00 AM »


The Federal Spending Boom Rolls On
Calling all DOGErs. Outlays rose 15% in the first third of fiscal 2025.
By The Editorial Board
Feb. 10, 2025 5:38 pm ET

Elon Musk has a bigger job than even he is advertising with his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Congressional Budget Office reported Monday that federal spending rose 15% in the first four months of fiscal 2025.

Outlays in the first months rose $317 billion to $2.43 trillion from September through January. Discounting for some timing shifts in outlays from 2024 and 2025, spending rose $157 billion, or 7%. We doubt your family budget rose 7%, and if it did you may need a loan.

The usual spending suspects were to blame: Social Security up 7%, Medicare up 5%, and Medicaid up 9% because of rising costs per enrollee. President Trump has taken these programs off the reform list, which is like saying you want to go on a diet except for the beer, chips and ice cream sundaes.

Defense outlays rose 8%, but that was much less than the 13% increase in payments on the national debt. Higher interest rates and ever-rising debt mean interest payments now exceed spending on defense. This ought to be a scandal, but both political parties are complicit.

DOGE is a good idea. But for all of Mr. Musk’s frenetic tweeting, and the Beltway cries of Apocalypse Now, so far DOGE is only nibbling at the edges of Washington’s spending problem. That takes Congress, which is why the Republican budget bills this year are where the real policy action is.

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ explains the unique posture of CFPB
« Reply #1662 on: February 11, 2025, 08:12:40 AM »

Justice for Elizabeth Warren
The Massachusetts senator is the reason her regulatory creation remains out of her control.
James Freeman
Feb. 10, 2025 4:13 pm ET

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) is incensed that a tool she created to expand regulatory power is being used by President Donald Trump to shrink it. Maybe next time she’ll be more careful about creating unaccountable bureaucracies.

Longtime Journal readers will recall that before Ms. Warren became a senator, she persuaded Congress and then-President Barack Obama to create a strange creature called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. The bureau would duplicate, replace or expand on the efforts of existing financial regulators but with a few dangerous twists. It would have no mandate to protect the safety and soundness of the financial institutions it regulates, and it would not rely on Congress for funding. Instead, the bureau would have the ability to draw funding from the Federal Reserve, ensuring that it wouldn’t have to pay much attention to legislators.

And it hasn’t. Then-Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R., Texas) wrote in the Journal in 2012:

My House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has tried unsuccessfully to gain greater visibility into the bureau’s budgetary planning process. I have repeatedly asked to review the bureau’s statutorily required financial operating plans and forecasts. These requests were denied.
Mr. Neugebauer contrasted the ability of the bureau’s director to draw money from the Fed with the efforts of people outside Washington to secure financing:

Once the director has decided that a money draw is “necessary,” there is nobody with authority to prevent these funds from being paid out. Not congressional appropriators. Not the Fed. Not even the president’s Office of Management and Budget.
What’s more, the bureau’s transfer requests often come in the form of one-page letters lacking details as to how the money will be spent. By comparison, in order to procure permanent financing for a commercial construction loan in West Texas, 29 separate documents are required—including a business plan and a complete set of building specs.
Unfortunately for Ms. Warren and the progressive left, Trump OMB director, Russ Vought, is now also the acting director of the bureau, and he’s using the authority she helped create for a purpose she never intended: benefiting taxpayers. Mr. Vought posts on X:

Pursuant to the Consumer Financial Protection Act, I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not “reasonably necessary” to carry out its duties. The Bureau’s current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment. This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off.
Hoist on her own petard, Ms. Warren will probably keep showing up outside federal buildings to scream objections to Trump efficiency measures. But that may be all she can do. Her beloved bureau may not even be able to keep the money it has already taken from the Fed.

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, writes at Reason:

Vought has effectively shut down operations and told workers to stay home. However, I don’t think anything would stop Vought from transferring that amount back to the Federal Reserve.
What happens going forward? Vought can starve the agency of funding if he deems the money not “reasonably necessary.” And Congress can’t do a damn thing about it. I don’t even know if there is some mechanism by which Congress could force the agency to take appropriated funds. I’m sure some D.C. Circuit panel could try to force Vought to request funding from the Federal Reserve. But that would be a striking and novel interference with executive power. Again, if the CFPB was a normal agency, the failure to spend money would raise impoundment concerns. But the CFPB was made above the appropriation power.
Elizabeth Warren and her colleagues sought to create an agency insulated from the President and Congress. That strategy may have made sense with Barack Obama in office and Mitt Romney on the horizon. But this approach is quite different with President Trump.
Mr. Blackman correctly notes:

From its inception, the CFPB was a separation of powers abomination.
Mr. Vought seems to have found the appropriate constitutional cure.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2025, 12:55:39 PM by Crafty_Dog »


Body-by-Guinness

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Gaming Out the Upcoming Federal Budget Shutdown & Showdown
« Reply #1664 on: February 11, 2025, 02:49:54 PM »
Politico games out the impact a federal shutdown will have on Republicans. The author’s opinion: not much:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/10/democrats-government-shutdown-column-00203440

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1665 on: February 11, 2025, 04:38:01 PM »
Is Politico making payroll after the cut off of USAID?

Body-by-Guinness

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1666 on: February 12, 2025, 02:23:55 AM »
Is Politico making payroll after the cut off of USAID?
See the Lindy Li post I dropped in Cognitive Dissonance/Left. She cites Politico as the place she was able to speak on background re Biden’s cognitive decline. So … perhaps Politico was reading the writing on the wall and actually, to some degree, doing its job?

Body-by-Guinness

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$1 Trillion in Improper Payments During Joe’s Last Year in Office
« Reply #1667 on: February 12, 2025, 10:20:49 AM »
Biden era fraudulent payments hold the record at nearly $1 trillion. It’s worth noting Trump’s first term was no great shakes either:

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/final-tally-for-biden-era-improper?r=2k0c5&triedRedirect=true

Body-by-Guinness

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A Judicial Feint into a Congressional Right Cross
« Reply #1668 on: February 12, 2025, 05:36:05 PM »
This could go a half dozen places, but given that the upcoming budget reconciliation is where the rubber hits the road, here will do:

☕️ SWAMP APOCALYPSE ☙ Wednesday, February 12, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Yesterday was a terrible, no-good, very bad day for the Swamp. Trump struck back in a coordinated assault on all fronts. He's not waiting for the courts to do the right thing—nor is he defying them.

JEFF CHILDERS

FEB 12, 2025

Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! Yesterday, instead of retreating into lawfare defense mode as everyone expected, the Trump Team unleashed the most devastating assault yet, the Deep State’s D-Day. Nobody’s covering it, but it is inescapable. You may have heard about some of the parts, but just wait till you see the big picture.

image.png
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

🔥🔥🔥

The Trump Team fooled everybody, including me. As last week’s various lawsuits sprouted restraining orders like early buds emerging all over the willow trees in springtime, most commenters expected Trump to take a necessary pause for defensive retrenchment. Surely, we all thought, it would take Trump’s anti-bureaucrats some time to clear the judicial logjam. But all of us were wrong.

A brief pause to clear past the TROs wasn’t Trump’s strategy at all. No pauses! Instead, yesterday Trump tripled down, jamming the battle tank’s accelerator into overdrive and smashing ahead in a whole different direction. His new battlefield banner unfurled yesterday afternoon in the form of one executive order plus three separate press conferences, which together sent a just-relaxing Deep State enemy racing for the bunkers with its trousers still half off.

It was a simultaneous coordinated assault, deployed with consummate skill in a single afternoon. It was all happening at once. We will start with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his incredible comments. The New York Times covered the story in a haplessly hysterical headline, “Johnson ‘Wholeheartedly’ Agrees With Trump’s Spending Cuts, Undermining Congress.”

Undermining Congress! The Times was vexed because Speaker Johnson told reporters he agreed that the President could unilaterally withhold congressionally authorized payments, if they are wasteful, fraudulent, or abusive. The Speaker explained, “There’s a presupposition in America that the commander-in-chief is going to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars.” Johnson also pointed out that DOGE workers were better able to make decisions on government funding than members of Congress, since “the agencies have hidden some of this from us.”

A tearful Times was clearly experiencing the “anger” stage of denial, as it raged over its despair that Congress and the President weren’t getting into a highly public budget fight after all. Johnson’s express agreement only helped Trump, both in the court of public opinion as well as the court of far-left judicial activists.

But that bit of welcome agreement was the least interesting thing Johnson said.

First, Johnson confronted the Democrats’ new “constitutional crisis” narrative, and encouragingly, vaccine mandates made an appearance. The Speaker explained:

The Democratic party is in a completely different place right now. There’s no identified leader of the party. They don’t have a clear vision. They just seem rudderless. In hopes of finding themselves, they’ve latched onto this new shiny object called ‘the rule of law.’ We’d like to welcome them to the concept.

It would be more admirable if they hadn’t spent the last four years with their heads buried in the sand while Biden literally trampled over the rule of law without objection.

In fact, many Democrats cheered that lawlessness, like when the Biden Administration unconstitutionally forced the middle class to pay the student loans of doctors and lawyers. They illegally mandated that private companies implement vaccine requirements. They radically rewrote Title IX to undermine women’s rights. Those things were actually illegal. The Democratic party cheered it on; they didn’t oppose it at all.

CLIP: Speaker Johnson defends DOGE and sarcastically mocks Democrats as insincere (1:48).

I can’t believe I’m noting this as an aside, but as you can see, with vaccine mandates having been included in Johnson’s list, the reckoning is still coming. But set that aside. We have bigger whales to fry today.

Johnson continued. He didn’t just accept DOGE, he endorsed it:

I met with Elon yesterday to get an update. To me, it is very exciting what they’re able to do. What Elon and the DOGE effort are doing right now is what Congress has been unable to do in recent years, because the agencies have hidden some of this from us.

DOGE is uncovering things that we’ve known intuitively have been there, but we couldn’t prove it. Now, the proof is being provided. And no one can argue the counter to that. So stay tuned—there’s a lot more to come.

The courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out. DOGE is is making sure that your tax dollars are spent in the way they were intended to be spent.

CLIP: Johnson explains how DOGE actually HELPS Congress be a good steward rather than ‘frustrating’ authorized spending, enraging the New York Times (1:32).

With me so far? It was very bad news for the permanent bureaucracy that DOGE and Congress are on the same team. It would have been so much better for them had Congress taken umbrage over the Executive refusing to make payment they’d authorized. But it got so much better.

Then Johnson delivered the coup de grâce, the single sentence revealing a ghastly Sword of Damocles dangling on a gossamer thread right above the Deep State’s masked head, and a critical puzzle piece dropped into what we perceive in the strategic brilliance of Trump’s de-Swamping order of operations. Johnson said:

We have a $36 trillion dollar federal debt. We have got to get ahold of these things. You’re going to see it reflected in the reconciliation package that comes forward, you’re going to see it reflected in the appropriations as we go forward, and you’re going to see it in these efforts to cut waste, fraud, and abuse.

And we think the final number on that is going to be substantial and a game changer in Washington.

The clear threat was in Johnson’s final sentence. A game-changer in Washington. DOGE isn’t the weapon, it’s just the canary in the limestone mine. Now that Congress knows where the waste is —like USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Department of Education, DEI spending, the Treasury, Social Security, and the rest— legislators are working up a budget bill to nuke the Deep State from orbit.

It’s wonky, but this is very important. The fact Johnson announced a budget bill is critical. Bills related to reconciling the budget can be passed using a process called ‘budget reconciliation,’ which avoids the Senate filibuster and can be approved with a simple majority. In other words, it’s the Deep State’s worst nightmare: first, DOGE identified the bureaucratic bloat, and so now Republicans in Congress have a viable legislative path to cut the guts out of the bloated, mutant Swamp whale.

Now we see that the DOGE data dumps have always been paving the way for this— the Congressional reconciliation bill. If Congress does the cutting, it will instantly cure all the alleged ills the Democrats and their captive judges have been complaining about. They howled that Trump was “overriding Congress” by stopping payments and so forth. But Congress is about to stop them.

And who knows what other goodies Republicans might stick in the reconciliation package.

I would bet a week’s salary that USAID, for example, is a dead duck, a spent force, a walking corpse. With DOGE’s data exposing where the transgender Operatic bodies were buried, Congress now has a fact-based justification for deep, tectonic cuts.

In other words, like a covid jab heart attack, the Deep State is suddenly and unexpectedly facing a whole new existential fight that arose right behind it— in Congress.

The Swamp thought DOGE was the main battle group, but it was only a reconnaissance force. Surprise! They wasted weeks trying to block, discredit, and contain DOGE, believing it was the real fight—but they were wrong. DOGE was never the main attack. DOGE was just scouting the battlefield, mapping the enemy’s weaknesses, and exposing vulnerabilities.

By shifting the battlefield to a budget reconciliation bill, Trump has neutralized the courts as any significant factor. Unlike executive actions, a budget bill passed through reconciliation is almost untouchable by judicial review. The only real challenges are procedural, which is a Senate issue, not a judicial one.

The Left thought they had Trump boxed in with lawsuits. Instead, they’ve spent weeks planning and fighting over emergency injunctions that will soon be completely irrelevant. The Deep State was preparing for trench warfare in front of judges, but Congress is unleashing a drone hellscape from their rear.

Trump tricked them all. The same activist judges siding against him using Congress as an excuse, must now twist into legal pretzels somehow arguing that neither Congress nor the Executive hold the power of the purse, which is even less constitutionally plausible. In other words, Trump tricked the judges into committing to a Congressional-powers argument, which becomes moot when Congress does it.

Checkmate.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/swamp-apocalypse-wednesday-february

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Government programs & regulations, spending, deficit, and budget process
« Reply #1669 on: February 12, 2025, 07:09:24 PM »
 8-) 8-) 8-)


ccp

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from post above
« Reply #1671 on: February 13, 2025, 10:03:27 AM »
thought popped into my mind

why do charities get tax payer money at all?

maybe this needs a look.  ?


DougMacG

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Re: from post above
« Reply #1672 on: February 13, 2025, 04:17:15 PM »
"Why do charities get tax payer money at all?"


Yes. This question nails it.  Worded differently, why does the Left have to be so diabolical? The why is to blur the lines. To create confusion. To make what is bad look good. To make it harder for you to oppose what they do.

And no, there should no blurring of government and charity. No tie between government and private sector. No connection between referees and teams.