Demolition, Man

PRESENTED BY MICROSOFT, CHEVRON, AND CLARK CONSTRUCTION

On June 21, 1788, the Constitution of the United States was ratified, making it the law of the land. The power of the federal government to spend money is governed by the Article I, Section 9, Clause 9, known as the appropriations clause: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law…”¹  

In the ensuing 237 years, Congress has passed several statutes to clarify and enforce its Constitutional authority, including the Miscellaneous Receipts Act, the Purpose Statute, Antideficiency Act, and Impoundment Countrol Act,² while at the same time granting greater fiscal powers to the executive, including giving the Treasury and Federal Reserve increasingly broad powers to issue government debt, subject to a fluctuating, Congressionally determined debt limit.

Since the First Congress, appropriations have been enacted primarily on an annual basis. In 1974, Congress passed the two-part Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. The first part, the Congressional Budget Act, created the modern budget process, establishing the Budget Committees and the Congressional Budget Office, and setting strict deadlines for passing budget and appropriations bills for an annual fiscal year that begins on October 1st. The second section, the Impoundment Control Act, was written in response to President Richard Nixon’s unconstitutional assertion of authority to curtail programs he didn’t like through impoundments.

The very first deadline for the new system—September 30, 1976—was mostly respected, with the 13 required appropriations bills passed on time, although there were a few agencies without appropriated funding from October 1 to October 11, when a continuing appropriations resolution was passed as a patch. The committee-based appropriations system quickly broke down, though, with only nine bills passing on time the next year, falling all the way to one by September 1980. A one to two-week delay after October 1 in passing a continuing resolution patch became the standard practice.

However, it was not until the end of the Jimmy Carter administration that the practice of “government shutdowns” began. Two decisions in 1980 and 1981 by Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti strictly interpreted the Antideficiency Act as requiring any agency without appropriated funding to suspend its operations until the enactment of an appropriation with limited exceptions, creating the modern government shutdown.³ The shutdowns were one- or two-day affairs until Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) became Speaker of the House in 1995, who engaged in brinkmanship with President Bill Clinton over healthcare spending and budget limits, in two shutdowns that furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers for nearly four weeks. Tea Party Republicans shut down the government in October 2013 in a failed bid to block Obamacare. Trump shut down the government for more than a month during his first term in a failed bid to extort funding for his border wall.

Under each of these previous government “shutdowns,” the furloughing of employees and suspension of government activities was managed by the federal bureaucracy, with limited White House or partisan interference.

This time, however, Trump is using the appropriations showdown to seize imperial power as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) cede Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse to White House Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought. At a White House luncheon for Republican senators last week during the demolition of the East Wing, Trump celebrated Vought as his “Darth Vader,” saying, “He’s cutting Democrat [sic] priorities, and they're never going to get them back.”

Instead of following Civiletti procedures, Trump White House’s Sith Shutdown is openly ignoring laws to pick and choose how and what employees to pay and programs to keep open, and trying to go farther by illegally firing thousands. Here are some of the euphemisms for Trump’s wildly illegal and unconstitutional moves during the shutdown used by the New York Times’s Tony Romm: “The moves, which are highly unusual” “stretched its authority in recent days” “expansion of presidential power” “encroached on congressional authority” “novel work to reshuffle the budget” “appeared to assert vast new authority” “the Trump administration’s actions raised serious legal questions” “essentially creating a new class of worker in the shutdown” “broader, lasting concern with Mr. Trump’s actions.”

In short, the government that’s being shut down is American constitutional democracy.

“The Trump administration on Thursday finalized plans to open the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to potential oil and gas drilling, renewing a long-simmering debate over whether to drill in one of the nation’s environmental jewels.”

Juiced by the artificially heated Atlantic Ocean, Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica with ungodly force on Tuesday night with sustained winds of up to 185 mph, making it the strongest storm to hit the island since meteorological recordkeeping began. It regained strength after passing over Jamaica and then flooded eastern Cuba as a Category 3 storm early Wednesday morning. At least 25 people have died in Haiti from flash flooding in the wake of Melissa.

“Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” replied Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 9:30 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
  The Section 106 Consultation Process Under the National Historic Preservation Act

• 10 AM: Senate Finance Committee
  Nominations of Thomas Bell to be Inspector General, Health and Human Services, Arjun Mody, to be Deputy Commissioner, Social Security, and Jeff Goettman and Julie Callahan to United States Trade Representative positions

• 3 PM: Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee
  Nominations of Mindy Brashears to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety, Stella Herrell to be Assistant Secretary of Agriculture of Congressional Relations, John Walk to be Inspector General, Department of Agriculture

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1  And of course Article I Section 1: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

2  The Purpose Statute, whose original form was passed in 1809, requires a connection between an appropriated purpose and a use of funds.

The Miscellaneous Receipts Act, passed in 1982 as part of the Money and Finance Act, requires funds received by a government agency to be immediately transferred to the Treasury to prevent agency-level slush funds.

The Antideficiency Act, once described as “the cornerstone of Congressional efforts to bind the Executive branch of government to the limits on expenditure of appropriated funds,” attempts to prevent unauthorized executive spending. The first version of the statute was passed in responce to Civil War-era overspending, and it has been modernized over the years as the federal government grew in complexity.

3  Civiletti never intended his rulings to be used to impose lengthy mass furloughs, a practice which only began 15 years later.