While everyone was talking about taxes and Medicaid cuts. around midnight MAGA snuck in provisions to cut funding for enforcing contempt of court violations and district courts’ ability to issue judgements with national effect. Add in Trumps’sunlimited ability to pardon, a cowardly Congress and what guard rails are left? Not the filibuster which is about to go the way of the dodo as MAGA ignores the Senate Parliamentarian.
What guardrails?
- Thread starter watu05
- Start date
Curious….the district judge on the case will be the one to issue the contempt citation. Usually resulting in a fine or brief jail time. What aspect of these orders and enforcement are being cut off?
Aren't you supposed to be busy being livid that your caucus just voted to substantially increase the deficit and did nothing to actually tackle rising debt servicing costs? Certainly would have been if Democrats did the same thing.
Did you miss in the other thread where I called out the increase in the deficit and discussed the dire situation we’re facing regarding debt service costs ? I’ll say it again…any bill which increases the deficit is not only a bad bill but a fiscal disaster. We don’t have the luxury of time. Our debt will continue to grow. Neither party has any interest in fiscal responsibility. It’s only a matter of time until our house of cars come crashing down.
Now back to my question regarding contempt citations .
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Remember back during the election season when I told you that a split government where the parties couldn’t do anything stupid was preferable to handing all of the government to people who don’t know (or don’t care about) what they’re doing because they would inevitable do something stupid?
Instead of digesting that, we were busy giving Trump the benefit of the doubt that he “knew nothing about project 2025” despite it being written by his entire previous administration staff.
The amount of societal damage done by this administration in 5 months has been more than any in US history… barring maybe Buchanan.
The neither party obfuscation is tiresome. Dems try to address the income side. Even Biden did but that’s the Republican red line. This budget bill is a disaster as all it does is borrow money to give to the wealthy and cut the safety net for the poor while undermining the US dollar. And weakening the judiciary while it is at it.
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Oh don’t forget it screws over clean energy and will raise electricity prices to support unproven nuclear technology.
Study of modular nuclear power plants is just as valuable to study and do research on as a lot of other studies of renewable power. Don't throw monikers around because it makes your point feel more valid.
Don't pretend like your party is all on top of reducing debt either from the income or the spending side. Both parties share the blame.
Somewhat agree but keep in mind that the last balanced budget was Clinton 2000 followed immediately by Dubya tax cut and deficits. Last proposed income tax increase was Biden. Obama and Biden tax increases were due to financial collapse handed off by Bush and Trump mishandling Covid. More importantly was use of money. Trumps tax cuts are to redistribute wealth from the poorest to the richest, just as this newest bill does. Biden ‘sinfrastructure bill was for productive investments and the poorest. Debt can be valuable but has to be used productively, like research , infrastructure or healthcare. This budget cuts productive investments
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Bravo to Clinton on balancing the budget, but he had the dot com bubble to thank for assistance. Who did it before Clinton? Nixon in '69. We can't go 25 or 30 years in between. You can blame something in the economy on the last president and the mess he made with his decisions for just about any administration. Of course the Democrats want to increase taxes, they are for big government. When have they cut expenses. Just about never. And the Democrats increasing taxes is about them wanting to provide more services more than them balancing the budget. There is no party here that can legitimately say they aren't equally to blame as the other party.
I didn’t say it wasn’t valuable, I said it’s not proven. All this is, is a shell game. Trump’s backers have investment in Uranium mining and SNR startups and they want to see money directed to them.
I think you kind of need to have a test case that succeeds before you dump your whole national effort behind such an endeavor.
Moreover… I still don’t trust the safety of SNR yet. The volume of the fissile material isn’t really the issue… I don’t trust the engineering methods of the companies investing in the space. GE Veronova for instance (who’s stock was saved by entry into the space) has a bad tendency to make some poorly designed systems / products. That doesn’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things when it’s a wind turbine or a steam turbine…. When it’s a nuclear reactor… it matters a whole hell of a lot.
They say that the game changer will be making the reactors modular…. But in reality modularity often means more opportunity for mass produced defects due to poor manufacturing processes rather than an intricately designed, incredibly detailed generation system. Essentially the difference between a Veyron and a Kia.
The first recalls / TILS put out on SNR units are going to be interesting.
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Look at federal spending over the last 20 years. Trying to solve our fiscal problem solely on the revenue side is foolhardy. I don’t understand how anyone can look at the rapid growth in spending and argue there’s a fix in the revenue side only. Biden could have easily tried to address the expenditure side via EOs the same way he attempted to add expenditures. All as we were running a $2T a year deficit. He failed. It will take both and the Dems won’t touch expenditures. Pubs tax increases. Our kids are screwed. We have a bunch of irresponsible adults running this country and have for years. Doesn’t matter which party is in charge the result of late is the same…deficits.
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It’s better than screwing over the income side every time you get into office by cutting taxes and then not actually cutting enough from spending.
The only way that things are actually going to be fixed is a combination of keeping taxes where they are (or raising them) and cutting spending. But you can’t do that in such a way that it simultaneously hampers GDP growth like what Trump is doing with tariffs. That’s back to messing up the income side.
Again agree but it’s not what matters the most. If I go in debt to build a business, go to school, or build a house I could run up a lot of debt. If I have a financial set back and borrow to get back on my feet to work or build my business, I could run up a lot of debt. But just borrowing for someone who doesn’t need it and who is undermining my business, as this budget does, is different.
Who on this board ever said that deficits should be solved solely on the revenue side? I and perhaps some others have said it's nuts to try to solve it solely on the cost side, particularly when tax policy is used to enrich the already wealthy, destroy scientific research and healthcare, and pass on monstrous debt to our children.
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Actually Geo Bush senior did and it cost him the support of his party and reelection. George Bush senior's demise was the start of my leaving the Republican party. Newt's Contract (on) America which created barriers to parties working across the aisle and Dubya's stupid invasion of Iraq completed my exit. I did enjoy the Clinton jokes in 1999.
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Bush Sr didn't have a balanced budget unless you have some caveats that you are using to say that. He never did actually balance the budget.
I have seen very few if any specific spending cuts from the left on this board. Likewise goes for tax hikes from the righties. Each side appears to be dug in and unwilling to discuss the necessary steps to solve our fiscal situation
You’re not going to cut your way out of some of these things. you have to put in place policies that will make dollars go farther and make programs more cost efficient.
I don’t want to cut services. I want the same services to be run 50% better and to cost 25% less.
Conceptually the Elon / Doge concept is good, but it was used as a political razor rather than an actual efficiency mechanism.
I also think going forward, contract mechanisms within the government need to be adjusted greatly… especially in the healthcare and military spaces.
It’s not quite a “cut” but I think closing sweetheart loopholes regarding depreciation methodologies that Oil companies use, ethanol subsidies, as well as the tax breaks that hedge fund managers and traders get are all things that should be ended / brought in line with other competitive markets.
I think new standards need to be put in place for medical billing (which really shouldn’t even be a thing anymore with the technology we have today) I also think congress needs to take another run at making health insurance spill over less costly for the government.
Republicans won’t touch those because they’re benefiting from them personally.
Highway funding could probably stand to be optimized. Take another look at tax breaks given to sham non-profits. Maybe churches too.
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Bush Sr. did help lay a foundation for Clinton's balanced budget. Point is that because he was willing to raise revenues, he was immediately abandonned by his own party. Of course 'read my lips" didn't help but It still illustrates how the Republicans were committed to cutting taxes despite the effect on the national debt.
The current conservative resistance in the Senate is focused solely about how to find even more cuts to reduce the damage of the tax cuts for the wealthy. The Laffer Curve has proved to be a laugher, as trickle down economics has produced only deficits instead of producing sufficient revenues to pay for the tax cuts. Of course, it might arguably have worked, IF the tax cuts had gone to lower income groups who would have spent the money immediately or been invested in productive assets. But sending the tax cuts to the wealthy who couldn't spend it all anyway, didn't work. Combine that with the unlimited political spending allowed by Citizens United, and ..well,...you end up where we are today.
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Hidden in the budget reconciliation bill…. “No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued …”
Most contempt orders in district court are in the form of fines. On occasion the court will order the at fault party to jail. However, that action is usually the responsibility of the sheriff’s department. No federal funds are used here. I’m still not seeing how this prevents contempt orders from being carried out at the district court level. Maybe WATU can provide his reasoning.
Also….what is the provision in the bill which would strip Medicaid from Walmart workers? I glanced through it and couldn’t find anything I thought would accomplish such an act
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Okay, can try looking at this from another direction…. Why is this even a line in a budget reconciliation bill? It is a regulation on the judiciary that will save pretty much no revenue and has no inherent value to the government other than making it harder for judges to enforce rulings.
It would be like me saying that courts can no longer spend any money or resources collecting fines from Democrats.
Agree it’s dumb to place in reconciliation bill but was significant enough for WATU to specifically call it out.
Again….how does this make it more difficult for a district court judge to enforce a contempt citation?
Did you figure out how Walmart workers are losing Medicaid ?
@Lawpoke on Medicaid…
www.kff.org
Eliminating the Medicaid Expansion Federal Match Rate: State-by-State Estimates | KFF
This analysis examines the potential impacts on states and Medicaid enrollees of eliminating the 90% federal match rate for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion. Eliminating the federal match rate for adults in the Medicaid expansion could reduce Medicaid spending by nearly one-fifth ($1.9...
www.kff.org
It reduces the options of the judges which is again, not something that should be included in any sort of budget bill. If your intent is to curb the power (the capability) of the judiciary to enforce rulings (even if it’s only a small imposition) that should go to the floor for a vote.
District court judges utilize the sheriffs dept to enforce contempt citations. Maybe the police in some jurisdictions. Neither of which are tied to federal money. Exactly which options are being reduced?
That article was written in the first part of February prior to the bill being discussed was even written. None of us know what the final version will look like but I find no across the board elimination of Medicaid expansion federal match funds in what I know of the current bill.@Lawpoke on Medicaid…
Eliminating the Medicaid Expansion Federal Match Rate: State-by-State Estimates | KFF
This analysis examines the potential impacts on states and Medicaid enrollees of eliminating the 90% federal match rate for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion. Eliminating the federal match rate for adults in the Medicaid expansion could reduce Medicaid spending by nearly one-fifth ($1.9...
If it doesn’t matter to anyone or any process at all then why would they put it in the bill?
Come on… use some deductive reasoning here.
They put that language in the bill because they want to prevent something from happening…. What do they want to prevent from happening?
