The link to the article might not work for you. The WSJ puts a code in the link so that it is a one-time access -- at least for me. When that happens however, just Google "Vindicating Congress Purse" or some such and you will get access through google for at least one read.
When I get behind on my blogging I put draft entries out that sit for awhile sometimes -- this ruling was in early May and it has NOT gotten much in the way of reporting. It is a SIGNIFICANT setback for BO, or would be if he wasn't above the law, because it says that if Congress does not appropriate money for BOcare he can't spend it -- which is what the Constitution has ALWAYS said, but is yet another place in which BO has explicitly broken his oath to support the Constitution.
Judge Collyer takes 38 pages to eviscerate the Administration’s claim that it can infer an appropriation if Congress has merely authorized a program. Congress authorizes all sorts of programs without spending money on them in one year or another. Presidents before Mr. Obama have understood that no money can be spent without an express appropriation.This brings us to the Iran Contra debacle. The LEGAL issue at stake, and the one that TP was certain would have been impeachable had they been able to prove it, was if Reagan directed the funding of the Contras in Nicaragua when Congress had not appropriated funds -- and if Congress could control the executive movement of monies that were not directly appropriated, but in this case "black", as they came from the sale of arms to the Iranians.
"The Party" (TP-D) was 100% certain back then of "Constitutional limitations on executive power", and how CRITICAL it was to STRONGLY enforce such things against Reagan, up to and including IMPEACHMENT for transfer of money that may have been in violation of the "Boland Amendment", an attempt by a Democratic Congress to limit Reagan that they repealed before it could be tested in the SCOTUS for Constitutionality. (the President can't spend money not appropriated, but can Congress explicitly control his FOREIGN policy via controlling even "off budget" spending? It gets into things like CIA, espionage, secret programs, etc -- before you say "we don't need them", consider the "Manhattan Project" which built the bomb ...
Strangely, BO smells differently to TP and it's media propaganda arm. In the Reagan days, the House of Representatives was POWERFUL. The head of the House Ways and Means committee, Dan Rostenkowski , was one of the best known names and most powerful men in Washington until he went to prison -- like many Illinois politicians. Can you even tell me the chairman of Ways and Means? It's Kevin Brady -- I didn't know and you didn't know. The MSM doesn't talk about them because the Constitutional power of the purse no longer resides there -- it resides with BO!
Do you have any idea what the deficit is projected to be in 2016? I didn't, so I did a Google -- the MOST striking thing is how VERY few articles show up on the deficit. During the Reagan years and the W years, the deficit was one of the biggest stories going! EVERYONE knew how the "failed policies" of Reagan and Bush caused high deficits, which were VERY bad! It's supposed to be $544 B, up $104B from last year. Nobody cares!
The media is very strange on deficits, CONGRESS controls the power of the purse! Clinton gets credit for all the deficit cutting that Gingrich did, and Newt is blamed for being mean and nasty for cutting the budget. Similarly, W gets the blame for the rapid rise in budget deficits after the D's took over Congress in '06, yet once the deficits when over $1T and even to $1.6T in 2010, the deficit story simply disappears! The media however LOVES to call '09 the "Bush budget", with Nancy Pelosi running the house and Harry Reid the Senate, plus BO adding $900B of pork in March of '09 -- but hey, that is a BUSH budget!
The highest actual W budget was $413B in '04 -- when the same party is in the WH and Congress, THEN it is FINE to blame the President. The R's took back the house in 2010, and by 2013 the deficit had dropped from the $1.6T in 2010 to $679B in 2013 -- and although we no longer heard about the deficit, we DID hear about how MEAN the Republicans were!
Up until BO started spending money on BOcare unconstitutionally, CONGRESS did ALL the appropriations! Now, since we no longer follow the Constitution, such a breach as BO has committed for BOcare subsidies is barely news, but at one time during Iran - Contra it was headlines news every day!
We live in a media echo chamber and we are fed what the media wants to feed us -- all of us, me too. Sure, I run across these things and blog on them, but it is humanly impossible to not be affected by the mass of people and our day to day interactions. TP has got us under their spell -- all of us, and unless there is a miracle of some sort of a "movement", "revival", etc, we will continue to fall prey to "well, this is just the way it is".
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