volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@csgordon@zirk.us @gwaldby

Yes, the modern idea of mandatory versus discretionary is nothing new, but it is also little more than rhetorical games that congresspeople play to try to avoid accountability and score points for the next election cycle, and we really really need to spend more time calling them out on it.

It is politicians spending money while claiming they have no choice but to spend tax dollars in ways that a lot of us are uncomfortable with. It is an excuse. And we need to call them out on it, not promote the powerful people using their excuses for exerting their power.

@csgordon@zirk.us @gwaldby

Again, Congress has no authority to obligate the executive to spend as that would be a violation of the separate but equal design of the US government.

You keep talking about political parties, but this has nothing to do with political parties. He has nothing to do with the GOP or Democrats. It is flat out the design of the US government regardless of who might be passing legislation or executing laws.

Honestly, it sounds like you are a little bit obsessed with political party strategies, but you should not let that cloud the issue.

The US government was designed to ignore that kind of thing and it is really interestingly neutral to that kind of thing. It doesn't matter what party might be in Congress and what party might be in the presidency, the rules still apply, and that is part of what makes it work so well.

The checks and balances of the US government are pretty interesting and pretty effective, as long as we don't try to short circuit them through partisan bias.

@csgordon@zirk.us @gwaldby

You're also making an error of conflating appropriating funding versus increasing authorized debt. Those two things are, both in terms of accounting and in terms of the Constitution, independent actions.

Congress can authorize the executive branch to spend, tax, and borrow, three different things.

Consider what happens if Congress authorizes spending that they expect to be completely covered by the authorized taxing, but throughout the year there is an economic downturn so that tax revenues fall short. Separately Congress may or may not choose to authorize borrowing to cover the shortfall.

So these are different and independent choices that Congress may or may not make. The executive is bound by what Congress chooses to do, but it is still in the hands of the executive to act within the bounds that Congress sets.

The US design of government is actually really interesting and really useful, really practical. Far too few people really appreciate how it works.

@csgordon@zirk.us @gwaldby

According to the Treasury's monthly reports, it absolutely DOES have the revenue and credit to pay all of its debts and obligations.

Again, I can pull up the report in the morning, or you can pull it up yourself from the Treasury's website.

The Treasury might not have the authority to borrow a bunch more money to fund future obligations that have been authorized by Congress, but it does have the money to service its debts as they stand.

By its own numbers the Treasury is in no danger of defaulting on its obligations. It should not obligate itself into the situation where it might be, but if the president wants to go that direction, he can, and he stands to be impeached over it.

@csgordon@zirk.us @gwaldby

If you're really interested I can pull up the Social Security act in the morning. It defines all of that stuff in statute, but I don't have my computer handy at the moment.

I really don't care about parties and who does what would debt. The two major parties screw it up enough on their own.

But the Constitution has really interesting things to say in terms of checks and balances to make sure there are interests challenging each other to make sure no one has too much power over any of this.

The legislative branch legislates, granting authority to the executive branch to execute, but only within the bounds of both legislative grant and, you know, math, and that's really the main thing I'm pointing out here.

If the Congress appropriates more money than exists, which it is free to do, what do you think happens then? The executive can't spend more money than exists. That would be mathematically impossible, and yet Congress is free to do that.

It all goes to show that with separation of powers Congress only authorizes, it cannot obligate, since that would open the door to obligating impossible things.

So really I'm appealing to the same logic that the design of the federal government was based on. Simple ideas of different sides performing different jobs in a system of co-equal branches that cooperate to get things done.

@csgordon@zirk.us @gwaldby

Well right, that's why this is so important that Congress cannot obligate or mandate that the executive branch must pay out.

This is why it is so important to remember that the co-equal branches design of the US government prevents exactly that situation.

The Treasury has enough revenue to service its debts, so as per the 14th there should be absolutely no question about defaulting. That the executive branch is even talking about defaulting is really out of line. The president is threatening explicitly to violate the Constitution.

That's a big deal to me, but apparently we're cool with it.

@abolitionbb

Again, my point was that seat belts actually do kill people.

I think you missed the point.

@csgordon@zirk.us @gwaldby

You are mistaken, and in a way that's very troubling because it is based on generations of outright lies by politicians.

Programs like Social Security are just other programs of the US government. By law. They are designed that way, and they're emphatically designed that way, they are no different from funding a road or a research project.

Again I emphasize that yes, politicians have been lying about this very very troublingly.

We even have the people administering the programs, the Social Security administration, emphatically sounding the alarm that their programs are in trouble specifically because they are not obligations. The administrators have been writing report after report trying to get attention as to the fiscal issues they are going to be facing, but we have politicians ignoring all of that and insisting that there's no problem here.

This is a huge deal!

I'm repeating myself, but politicians are insisting that programs like SS are guaranteed, even as the people running SS are warning that the program will fail, and all of the people counting on it are being misled by the politicians.

At any point Social Security payments can be ended. When the program runs out of money they will be ended. That fact is very significant and it is very very unhealthy that the politicians have denied that reality.

@abolitionbb

It's kind of like abolishing seat belts.

Yeah, Even though seat belts save a ton of lives, every once in a while a seatbelt will actually contribute to injury or death. So we should definitely outlaw seat belts in vehicles.

The violence of seat belts knows no bounds.

If Congress passes a law saying that the president is required on every Saturday to get up and flap his wings and fly around the room, what do you think he should do with that?

Obviously he should ignore that law because it is ridiculous.

Yes, the Executive is free to ignore unconstitutional or ridiculous laws. And it doesn't take anything involving courts to resolve that dispute.

Keep in mind that Congress is free to pass a law saying that the President must flap his wings and fly around the room, and then impeach any president who does not follow through with that.

The courts are not involved in that dispute. It is between those two branches.

And it's up to voters as to whether we want to elect congresspeople who will impeach presidents without the ability for flight.

Yeah, I'm being a little ridiculous with this example, but it does illustrate the design and function of the US government.

Congress authorizes spending, but it is up to the executive branch to execute what it wants to, and then it is also up to Congress to impeach over basically anything if they don't like what the president does.

@ophiocephalic

I don't think it's very funny, to be honest, because I think people need to be very very aware that their instance is under the control of whatever manager of the instance can at any point implement censorship both coming and going, silencing users posts or blocking things from the user being able to see.

I guess you can say that you are free to choose your master, or even jump to the hoops to be your own master, but it's not the paradise we might wish for.

@csgordon@zirk.us @gwaldby

Yes, the executive shall execute the law. But laws are only legal if they are constitutional. Any unconstitutional law is one that the executive is not bound to execute.

So when Congress authorizes spending, effectively giving the president the option of spending, the president shall execute that by spending no more than Congress has authorized.

But if Congress orders the president to spend money, well that's just unconstitutional so the president is free to ignore that order. It's an illegal order, and unconstitutional order, so the shall does not apply.

This comes up most clearly when Congress authorizes the president to spend more than there is in the Treasury. There's no contradiction so long as we keep in mind that Congress does not spend money.

@retrohondajunki

Well perhaps, and I have seen articles saying that Google is aware of this task and is thinking about how to contribute to it.

But one does not really publish TO Google. Instead Google finds content that it wants to index.

You can run into issues with sort of compatibility where different instances will display the same content so Google might be cataloging the same content on different domains, which throws a wrench into it.

I would say in general yes, Google is an option, kind of an external viewer cataloging things. But internal to the platform it gets even harder

@alfredo_liberal@universeodon.com

If you've only seen the current events filtered through your particular echo chambers and preferred sources, what makes you think you have any idea what's going on there?

It honestly sounds like you are proud that you haven't been following the actual happenings in the chamber.

@ophiocephalic

The problem is, the Fediverse design is absolutely not anarchist. In fact it solidifies control of systems and other people into management of the different instances.

It's not actually decentralization. It's further centralization into different instances, even as they happen to be federated.

So I, for one, really don't know what you're on about.

@PeoplesCDC

But every one of the things you say you need is provided by or is involved with a market.

You're asking for a marketized approach, even if the market is subsidized by taxation of others.

Taking from the many to give to the few, it is a tall order.

@retrohondajunki

Unfortunately that runs into a complication of running a federated system.

It runs into real engineering and scalability problems since it requires more and more processing power and network traffic to transmit all of that data to all of the different databases that would be required to be maintained to do such searches.

It's a feature that a lot of people want, but it's one that would be very expensive to implement, so it's a tall order.

It's just a cost of trying to set up a system that is federated instead of completely centralized where there would just be one database.

@csgordon@zirk.us @gwaldby

The act of Congress authorizes spending.
It does not require spending, since that would be a violation of the constitutional separation of power.

Congress effectively says that the president may spend money out of the Treasury, but if the money doesn't exist in the Treasury anyway, then the law is moot.

If I tell you that you can spend up to $1,000 out of the cash in your wallet, but you only have $20 in there, then you can spend 20. There's no conflict there, no contradiction, I have authorized you to spend a bunch of money but it's a ceiling that is subject to what is actually available to spend.

So no, under the Constitution the Congress cannot obligate the executive branch to spend money. It is an equal branch, not a subservient branch. Congress can authorize, as per the Constitution, but it can't actually spend for itself.

@david @tedcurran

Nope. For example, I have no idea who you are as a person, and that doesn't bother me.

Whoever you are, if you're interested in talking, cool.
Or more to the point, if you're interested in talking in the non-troll persona you've been speaking with, cool. :)

You might be the world's biggest troll as a person, but this identity of yours isn't, so I'm happy to keep exchanging, because it's not the person that we engage through here.

(I assume you're not actually trollish person, but the point is, it's the identity I'm talking to, regardless of whether you actually are a trollish person or not)

But as a person, I don't know if you're employed, but if you are, aren't there some things you wouldn't want your employer to see you talking about? Having that work-life separation? Being able to express yourself outside of any fear for how it might impact your career?

We all wear different masks in daily life. We talk to parents differently from how we talk to friends.

Really, those are all cases of having different identities.