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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35139 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Historically, the check on monarchs' power was the need to convene parliament to raise new taxes. Now, the president must convene congress to beg permission to spend less money. Is it tyrannical for the executive branch to not spend money raised by congress? Is president Trump ushering in a Daoist dictatorship through unilateral inaction?

Yes. If parliament or congress identifies an area of interest and specific actions, including dictating funds to execute those actions, the executive must see that the law is faithfully executed.

Trump has a friendly Congress -- he doesn't need to impound anything, he can just have his fellow party members remove those appropriations. This whole thing is the most absurd kayfabe.

Congress says spend X dollars to achieve Y. USAID spends X dollars to achieve Z. Trump would faithfully be executing the laws to impound the spending by USAID since they conflict with Congressional commands.

Yes, under that fact pattern they would have to stop Z.

Then they would have to do Y.

Yes so let’s get upset if in the future they don’t do Y. Not upset they are stopping Z

I think it's natural to be suspicious when someone talks about dissolving or defunding the agency whose job it would be to do Y. That ought to be sufficient to cause a reasonable person doubt that they intend to fully spend all the funds that Congress appropriated for Y on Y.

Except they said there are some good things and Rubio is going to tackle it

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