The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that SNAP benefits will not be issued for next month.

A society is always about 3 days of hunger away from a violent revolution. Start your clocks.

  • Dragonstaff@leminal.spaceEnglish
    12·
    16 hours ago

    Shutdowns have terribly little to do with the Constitution or Founding Fratboys. They’re mostly the result of the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (and then repealing the “Gephardt rule” in 1995).

    Having a debt ceiling is idiotic. Congress passes a budget to decide what to spend, so why would they need to pass another bill to fund the spending they already passed? Literally, the answer to that is “So they can shut down the government.”

    This isn’t an issue of “the power of the purse” or checks and balances. It’s political grandstanding. Republicans are determined to break the country.

    • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      12 hours ago

      Shutdowns have terribly little to do with the Constitution . . … They’re mostly the result of the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (and then repealing the “Gephardt rule” in 1995).

      What ever restrictions that Congress puts on its budgets and developing budgets are well within its power of the purse under Article 1 Section 8, which expressly states:

      To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

      If Congress chooses to express that limitation within a statute, that is well within its rights. So, whether or not it is actually about political grandstanding is moot under the constitution because it is expressly within Congress’s power of the purse.