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.

  • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    2·
    1 day 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.

    • Dragonstaff@leminal.spaceEnglish
      1·
      8 hours ago

      My point is that nothing in the Constitution requires government shutdowns. Your comment about “the power of the purse” was fairly off base/misleading because it’s all political grandstanding.

      This country existed for ~225 years with no government shutdowns. Yes, it has always been within Congress’s rights to be dumbasses, I didn’t suggest otherwise. I just want to be clear that nobody is forcing them.

      Shutdowns are not caused by the Constitution or any quirk of American procedure. Newt Gingrich passed a law so he could hold the government hostage, and Republicans have gotten worse ever since.