“We’re seeing more evidence for this adage as the government shut downs following Democrats’ refusal to vote for a spending bill that did not include an extension of “temporary” Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, subsidies passed during the pandemic.
Those enhanced subsidies were passed as a temporary measure as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act in March 2021, and then extended through the end of 2025 by the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
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Making these subsidies permanent would not be cheap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would cost $340 billion a year.
On the flip side, letting the tax credits expire would result in about 1.6 million higher-income earners losing subsidies completely. Millions more would continue receiving a smaller subsidy and see their premiums rise as a result.”
“Certain benefits will continue to be administered: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and assistance for Veterans. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will not be affected initially, but could be if the shutdown goes on for a long time. The federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program will not be able to accept any new applicants starting today. In the past, “inspections of chemical factories, power plants, oil refineries and water treatment plants were disrupted because the Environmental Protection Agency furloughed most of its employees in charge of monitoring pollution and compliance,” reports the Times. “Some routine food safety inspections also stopped.”
National parks have previously had their operations hobbled; open-air sites will probably stay open but visitors centers or other areas that need staffing will shut down. The Department of the Interior says that restrooms will be cleaned and garbage will be collected”
“In 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that President Franklin Roosevelt acted illegally when he tried to fire an anti-New Deal commissioner from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC “cannot in any proper sense be characterized as an arm or an eye of the executive,” declared the Court in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. “We think it plain under the Constitution that illimitable power of removal is not possessed by the President in respect of officers of the character of those just named.”
But that was then. More recently, the Supreme Court has all but announced that Humphrey’s Executor faces imminent judicial execution, an outcome that would allow President Donald Trump (and every president who succeeds him) to fire “independent” agency heads at will.”
“What does shutdown theater actually cost taxpayers? Lost Productivity, for starters. The 2013 shutdown cost $2.5 billion in back pay to 850,000 furloughed employees who missed a combined 6.6 million work days. All that productivity was permanently lost, since they were paid for work not performed.
Shutdowns also result in special expenses specifically related to preparing for shutdowns. Before each shutdown, agencies must develop detailed contingency plans outlining which functions will continue and which will stop. This pulls hundreds of thousands of employees from their regular duties to document procedures that everyone hopes will never be used.
Shutdowns cause economic disruption. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the 2018-2019 shutdown reduced GDP by $11 billion in all, including $3 billion that will never be recovered. The 2013 shutdown cost the economy $24 billion and 120,000 private sector jobs.
Finally, shutdowns cause a great deal of administrative drama. Beyond direct costs, shutdowns can delay tax refunds (almost $4 billion in 2013), halt fee collections, and force the government to pay penalty interest on late payments. These indirect costs often exceed the supposed savings from furloughing workers. (White House Office of Management and Budget, November 2013)”
“Over the last eight months, the Trump administration has run roughshod over Congress and its constitutional prerogatives. Trump’s decision to ignore the TikTok ban on his first day in office may seem minor in the grand scheme of things, but it foreshadowed a series of far more aggressive moves to usurp much of lawmakers’ constitutional authority: dismantling congressionally-created agencies, redirecting congressionally appropriated funds and implementing a massive tax hike on the American public in the form of Trump’s chaotic tariff regime.
The vast majority of this was made possible by congressional Republicans, who have largely turned a blind eye to all of Trump’s gambits, and by the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, who have handed Trump a series of victories this year in his wide-ranging efforts to both unilaterally slash the federal government while dramatically expanding the powers of the presidency.
The acquiescence to Trump’s TikTok reprieve this year has been a far more bipartisan affair, but it has been a constitutional farce all the same, and it is not over yet.”
“President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel nearly $5 billion in federal aid without congressional authorization appears to be a straightforward violation of federal law.
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While that spending might be wasteful or foolish, the president does not have the authority to refuse to spend money that has been appropriated by Congress—though the Trump administration seems eager to challenge that limitation on executive power.
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The laws that govern the federal budget process—most importantly, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA)—allow presidents to make rescission requests to Congress. Trump did that earlier this year, and lawmakers followed through by cutting $9 billion in previously approved spending. The law also allows the executive branch to freeze funding for up to 45 days while Congress considers such a request.
Ross Vought, the director of the White House budget office, has argued that the executive branch can use that 45-day window to do exactly what Trump is now attempting: cancel any spending during the final 45 days of the fiscal year, which ends on September 30. “By withholding the cash for that full timeframe—regardless of action by Congress—the White House would treat the funding as expired when the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30,” Politico explained earlier this year.
Vought is wrong about that.
“The President has no unilateral authority to impound funds,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in 2018 when it was asked by the House Budget Committee to examine the question of pocket rescissions. “We conclude that the ICA does not permit the impoundment of funds through their date of expiration. The plain language of the ICA permits only the temporary withholding of budget authority and provides that unless Congress rescinds the amounts at issue, they must be made available for obligation.”
Indeed, if the president were allowed to cancel any federal spending within the final 45 days of the fiscal year, then he could effectively cancel any federal spending at any time—by delaying the release of funds until the end of the year, then canceling them.”
While both parties gerrymander, Republicans are the worst offenders. More Democratic states turned over their district drawing to neutral drawers. Republicans did not join them. Trump is leading the charge to gerrymander more often. Democrats like California’s governor are temporarily overturning their states’ neutrally drawn districts in order to combat Trump’s aggression.
Fair maps are needed to improve U.S. democracy, but even fair maps won’t be proportional because of where people live. You’d have to get rid of the district system altogether if you wanted representatives to be proportional to population.