Also, there are other things hidden in the budget bill. For example, there is a clause that would make administration officials immune from being held in contempt: https://www.rawstory.com/trump-restraining-order/
(I don't know if the courts would rule that constitutional. But the attempt is there.)
jack_h · 51m ago
It would be handy if they could actually quote the text of the bill and maybe link to a specific version rather than making assertions. I have multiple versions of the bill up in front of me and "contempt" and a few related searches turns up nothing.
> 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 pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.
jack_h · 29m ago
Thanks for tracking it down. It looks like my browser fails when searching large PDFs. It would still be nice if journalists provided links, sections, etc.
lokar · 14m ago
Could a judge appoint a state agency to enforce the citation for free?
mikeyouse · 38m ago
For the text + an analysis of the legal implications:
> The provision in the proposed budget reconciliation bill states: “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 pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.”
> By its very terms this provision is meant to limit the power of federal courts to use their contempt power. It does so by relying on a relatively rarely used provision of the Rules that govern civil cases in federal court. Rule 65(c) says that judges may issue a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order “only if the movant gives security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the costs and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.”
...
> But the provision in the House bill would make the court orders in these cases completely unenforceable. Indeed, the bill is stunning in its scope. It would apply to all temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and even permanent injunctions ever issued. By its terms, it applies to court orders “issued prior to, on, or subsequent” to its adoption.
photochemsyn · 29m ago
Politically partisan economists don't seem to grasp the fundamental problem with hyper-financialization of the economy or even understand what made such a program possible.
Take outsourching of industrial manufacturing to overseas labor zones. Historically, industrial economies (eg late 19th century Germany) were reluctant to do this because they knew they'd lose control of their technologies and profit streams (thus German companies resisted British demands that they build their chemical factories in Britain to serve the British market). The American neoliberals, in contrast, thought they could control the overseas sweatshops through a combination of economic free trade deals backed up by covert regime change and overt military interventions, with the result being concentration of wealth domestically combined with an economic shift towards financialization - wealth management in other words. These policies were bipartisan and the result - gross wealth inequality leading to societal tensions - should have been obvious to all - except to the academic economists and their aggregate econometric models.
The wealth inequality problem isn't going to be solved by Democrat-supported handouts to the poor from Congress - the first step will be to accept the fundamental flaws in hyper-financialized investment capitalism, which merely extracts wealth from the middle class and funnels it upwards, versus a mixed system of industrial capitalism and socialism, which encourages middle-class prosperity along with industrial and technological development.
A simple example is illustrative: if we have the Fed print $1M for each US citizen, then at 5% return on investment, everyone gets a universal basic income of $50K/yr and nobody ever has to work again... except for the slaves on the overseas plantations?
No comments yet
lokar · 40m ago
While I generally agree with krugman, he and other on the left need to be more honest about what funding our (very modest) social safety net will cost.
The idea that a the billionaires could easily pay this is just wrong. You could take the wealth of all US billionaires and it fund government for less then a year.
They should pay more, but for fairness, it won’t fix the budget. For that the middle class needs to pay more. They pay less then they have in modern history, and less then other places.
bryanlarsen · 31m ago
Standard deflection technique. Please debate the article itself rather than changing the topic and implicitly defending the indefensible.
(I don't know if the courts would rule that constitutional. But the attempt is there.)
> SEC. 70302. RESTRICTION OF FUNDS.
> 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 pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.
https://www.justsecurity.org/113529/terrible-idea-contempt-c...
> The provision in the proposed budget reconciliation bill states: “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 pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.”
> By its very terms this provision is meant to limit the power of federal courts to use their contempt power. It does so by relying on a relatively rarely used provision of the Rules that govern civil cases in federal court. Rule 65(c) says that judges may issue a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order “only if the movant gives security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the costs and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.”
...
> But the provision in the House bill would make the court orders in these cases completely unenforceable. Indeed, the bill is stunning in its scope. It would apply to all temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and even permanent injunctions ever issued. By its terms, it applies to court orders “issued prior to, on, or subsequent” to its adoption.
Take outsourching of industrial manufacturing to overseas labor zones. Historically, industrial economies (eg late 19th century Germany) were reluctant to do this because they knew they'd lose control of their technologies and profit streams (thus German companies resisted British demands that they build their chemical factories in Britain to serve the British market). The American neoliberals, in contrast, thought they could control the overseas sweatshops through a combination of economic free trade deals backed up by covert regime change and overt military interventions, with the result being concentration of wealth domestically combined with an economic shift towards financialization - wealth management in other words. These policies were bipartisan and the result - gross wealth inequality leading to societal tensions - should have been obvious to all - except to the academic economists and their aggregate econometric models.
The wealth inequality problem isn't going to be solved by Democrat-supported handouts to the poor from Congress - the first step will be to accept the fundamental flaws in hyper-financialized investment capitalism, which merely extracts wealth from the middle class and funnels it upwards, versus a mixed system of industrial capitalism and socialism, which encourages middle-class prosperity along with industrial and technological development.
A simple example is illustrative: if we have the Fed print $1M for each US citizen, then at 5% return on investment, everyone gets a universal basic income of $50K/yr and nobody ever has to work again... except for the slaves on the overseas plantations?
No comments yet
The idea that a the billionaires could easily pay this is just wrong. You could take the wealth of all US billionaires and it fund government for less then a year.
They should pay more, but for fairness, it won’t fix the budget. For that the middle class needs to pay more. They pay less then they have in modern history, and less then other places.