I really wish the Democrats would make a bigger point of this:
What is different about the 2025 budget fight than previous ones?
A lot of the dynamics are still the same. You still have partisan fighting. And you still have some divides within the two parties that I think are worth mentioning. One example: There was a Senate vote just the other day on one of these budget resolutions, and a couple of Republicans voted with the Democrats. So for some of these more deficit-hawk Republicans, that concern is still playing a role.
What’s new this time around is this element of rescissions. This is a tool that’s been available since the 1970s in which presidents ask Congress to rescind spending that they had allocated. This is what happened earlier this year with the rescissions on public broadcasting – NPR and PBS – that got a lot of attention, as well as on USAID. Trump said he wanted to cut funding for public broadcasting – the GOP in the Senate and House voted to let him. They didn’t need 60 votes in the Senate for a rescission, either. Just a majority for this move.
So in this case, Democrats are looking at this and thinking, “Why should we negotiate, if you’re just going to rescind that later on without our consent?” That’s a major element that’s changed. While it’s a power that has been in place for a while, Trump and the Republicans have been really willing to wield that.
This seems to me to be the essential argument that plays into the administration’s autocratic approach to everything. They believe the Congress is irrelevant. Russell Vought will use the rescission power to spend money as the administration wants it spent regardless of the appropriations process. And the Republicans will come along later and co-sign whatever he does because they are a bunch of potted plants who no longer have minds of their own. They have already done it once and they’ll do it again.
There is no such thing as a “deal” on government spending anymore, whether it’s one that the Republicans jam through in the congress or whether it’s one with the Democrats under the threat of a government shutdown. The administration will do whatever it wants.
I don’t know where this leads us in terms of the current showdown. The Democrats have to hang tough because it’s the only power they have and their constituents are demanding that they use it. And there is a chance they might prevail temporarily because we’re going into an election cycle which has some Republicans worried about these Obamacare subsidies hitting hard. So, the Dems might pull off a “win.” But I would assume that Vought will rescind them again after the election because the whole point is to show that the president is king and they will do what they want.
By the way, I would also assume that the Supreme Court majority will back them. They too believe that Congress is a sort of ceremonial institution there for the purpose of naming post offices and tugging their forelocks for the president.
Here’s a gift link to a story by the NY Times today about Vought. If you are a regular reader here you already know about this miscreant but it’s good to see the mainstream press focusing on him at long last. He and Stephen Miller are running the government. And they are both very, very dangerous people.
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Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:
In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.
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