Comment by _heimdall
7 days ago
> No it is not. Their job as laid out in the Constitution is to faithfully implement the laws.
Sure, we can debate semantics here if you want. I'm fine swapping in "faithfully execute" into my prior comment though, that's basically what I meant without going word for word constitutional.
My point remains though. "Faithful execution" is in the eye of the beholder and is up for debate. One person may see the Department of Education as faithfully executing the congressional mandate while another could see it as poorly run, inefficient, or point to our education level relative to other countries. Both would have good arguments to make.
Further, I don't read Congress's power to approve the budget as part of the mandate for a department. Congress isn't saying "spend XX billion and build an education department," they're saying "build an education department and don't spend more than XX."
That can surely be debated in a legal context, but I think you would be hard pressed to find many average people that would read a budget as a "spend every penny" mandate. Many corporations operate this way, and while in my experience people will spend their full budget to avoid a decrease next year they are also well aware of the absurdity of that.
The impoundment law itself was/is controversial and this will surely be challenged in court on those grounds. The question still remains, though, whether any miscarriage of the law us found in departments being shut down. Its too early, mainly because they at least appear to be acting rashly, but that doesn't mean these departments have been faithfully executing to date.
> "Faithful execution" is in the eye of the beholder and is up for debate.
The semantics here are everything, it's the debate. What does the Constitution mean and what was the purpose of America? We've reached ground zero here.
To me, the purpose of America is a government for the people made possible by checks and balances -- separating powers so that they can't be abused, and giving the people ultimate choice.
Maybe you disagree, because that's not what you are suggesting. If we give in to your reading of the Constitution, the executive has the most power of all branches, which shifts power away from the people in a dramatic way.
I've asked you three times now, and you have evaded the central question -- if the executive can pick and choose laws to enforce, defund departments at whim, what is the point of laws at all?
I suspect you haven't answered it directly because you'd have to admit your reading of the Constitution implies a monarchy. And that's why we are debating semantics now, depending on how the words are interpreted we either have a system of checks and balances, or we have unbalanced unchecked power in the executive branch.
> The impoundment law itself was/is controversial
Yeah, it was controversial among people who didn't want to follow the law, and instead wanted to use their power to go around it. The concept of checks and balances is not popular with the people being checked.