Trump to cut taxes on Social Security

Tax Counsel said:
Making the government more efficient is great. But doing it by attempting to do it by either going around Congress when Congress must approve it or creating or terminating agencies, another power given to Congress rather than the President, and attempting to take power granted to other branches or wholly create new powers not granted by the Constitution are all things that amount to a power grab by a president. and we've already seen Trump try a majority of those to bring more of the federal government under his direct control.
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Instead of speaking in generalities, how about giving some examples of how Trump is going around Congress in running the executive branch?

Here are two examples that prove you incorrect in your statement. doing it by attempting to do it by either going around Congress when Congress must approve it or creating or terminating agencies, another power given to Congress rather than the President,

Both USAID and the Dept of Education were created by Executive Order. They were not created by Congress. Any agency created by Executive Order can be terminated by Executive Order. Congress has nothing to do with it.

If you want to talk about a power grab, let's talk about the Judicial Branch interfering with the President's ability to run the Executive Branch.
 
stealthy1 said:
Elon stated (in his OO presser). that he knew this one was false. How many others are?
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Was the amount false, or just that there was no funding for condoms in Gaza at all?

You would have to ask Elon which ones were false or true, but I think he agrees that legitimate foreign aid should be administered by the State Department and not 10,000 employees in USAID, and that significant waste and abuse should be eliminated. The increase in USAID budget I mentioned was reported on this news site (a local news channel in Seattle):
komonews.com

LIST: 'Insane priorities' of USAID spending during Biden Administration

In the past week, there has been a lot of discussion around the USAID and where the billions of dollars in humanitarian aid actually goes.
komonews.com komonews.com
 
Mark_A said:
I don't think you care about more power concentrated in the presidency, because Obama and Biden made more power grabs than other presidents in history, some of which were struck down by SCOTUS.
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You seem to be assuming that I didn't oppose the power grabs made by those presidents. That assumption is not accurate. I don't like the power grabs of Democrats any more than I do those of Republicans. The way Trump is starting out is a rather rocky road and if he wants to succeed in doing greats things he needs to stop alienating people and cease his scattershot approach to governing. He could start by focusing on things that would have broad support. Dumping Musk as a key advisor would be a good start.
 
welkin said:
Both USAID and the Dept of Education were created by Executive Order. They were not created by Congress. Any agency created by Executive Order can be terminated by Executive Order. Congress has nothing to do with it.
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You have your facts wrong. The Department of Education was indeed created by Congress in the The Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88). While JFK created the USAID it was later established as a separate agency by Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-277). Thus as those two federal government agencies exist they were both created by acts of Congress and the president can't simply get rid of them by executive order.

welkin said:
If you want to talk about a power grab, let's talk about the Judicial Branch interfering with the President's ability to run the Executive Branch.
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It is the role of the courts to act when the president acts outside of his authority or contrary to law. As you are a die hard Trump supporter I'm not surprised that you see those decisions as "interference". But the courts are simply doing what they've done for almost 250 years: deciding cases and setting the precedent of what the federal government is permitted to do. I don't always like the decisions of the courts, but I respect the important role they play in our democratic republic.
 
Tax Counsel said:
It is the role of the courts to act when the president acts outside of his authority or contrary to law. As you are a die hard Trump supporter I'm not surprised that you see those decisions as "interference". But the courts are simply doing what they've done for almost 250 years: deciding cases and setting the precedent of what the federal government is permitted to do. I don't always like the decisions of the courts, but I respect the important role they play in our democratic republic.
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Somehow, when the Supreme Court overrules the lower federal district courts on most of these issues, I don't think you are going to speak so favorably about the courts. The Constitution determines what the powers of the branches of government are, and the court is supposed to just abide by that, but not all courts do that, especially lower federal courts where plaintiffs can shop around for a favorable collection of judges that happen to be in a particular federal district court.

The reaction of liberals to the Supreme Court has not been to abide by their decisions, or to the Constitution which created the Judicial branch, but to come up with plans to pack the court or institute term limits (not by Constitutional amendment), and other despicable acts that make it clear they have no respect for the US Constitution.

How anyone can criticize Elon Musk is beyond me. He is just identifying fraud and abuse and making people aware of government expenditures (or bribes in many cases), and it is up to the President and Legislature to deal with that.
 
Tax Counsel said:
You seem to be assuming that I didn't oppose the power grabs made by those presidents. That assumption is not accurate. I don't like the power grabs of Democrats any more than I do those of Republicans. The way Trump is starting out is a rather rocky road and if he wants to succeed in doing greats things he needs to stop alienating people and cease his scattershot approach to governing. He could start by focusing on things that would have broad support. Dumping Musk as a key advisor would be a good start.
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I believe that the majority of people right now support the Trump administration on most things. It may not be a huge majority, but it is a majority nonetheless. I don't think that was true for Biden because most people didn't even know all the illegal, immoral, and surreptitious things he was doing. How one can criticize Musk for just documenting what Biden spent money on, is beyond me.
 
stealthy1 said:
No idea - we've yet to see any proof of anything he's claimed. Until he provides some concrete evidence of fraud/waste, I'll run with his claims being false.
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Someone else posted that amount of money was indeed authorized or allocated for condoms in Gaza, but it was not spent, or not all spent, not sure. There was a slight mixup as to how it was reported in some media outlets. So the fact that it was approved by USAID to be spent on that is outrageous enough, regardless of whether the money was actually spent.
 
Mark_A said:
Someone else posted that amount of money was indeed authorized or allocated for condoms in Gaza, but it was not spent, or not all spent, not sure. There was a slight mixup as to how it was reported in some media outlets. So the fact that it was approved by USAID to be spent on that is outrageous enough, regardless of whether the money was actually spent.
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"Someone else" and "some media outlets"... not exactly helpful information. It's akin to Leavitt waving around so-called "receipts" in the air and calling them proof.
 
stealthy1 said:
"Someone else" and "some media outlets"... not exactly helpful information. It's akin to Leavitt waving around so-called "receipts" in the air and calling them proof.
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It was posted by a moderator of this forum (earlier in this thread) that the money for condoms in Gaza was allocated, but not distributed (perhaps because of the war in Gaza). Because a moderator posted it, you must accept it:
W

Post in thread 'Trump to cut taxes on Social Security'

stealthy1 said:
Elon stated (in his OO presser). that he knew this one was false. How many others are?
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How about the $57M FEMA sent to NYC last week to house illegals in luxury hotels.

stealthy1 said:
Elon stated (in his OO presser). that he knew this one was false. How many others are?
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It's true that the money was never sent. But the Biden administration, through the USAID, allotted the money.
  • Like

Denial is not a river if Africa.
 
Mark_A said:
It was posted by a moderator of this forum (earlier in this thread) that the money for condoms in Gaza was allocated, but not distributed (perhaps because of the war in Gaza). Because a moderator posted it, you must accept it:
W

Post in thread 'Trump to cut taxes on Social Security'

stealthy1 said:
Elon stated (in his OO presser). that he knew this one was false. How many others are?
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How about the $57M FEMA sent to NYC last week to house illegals in luxury hotels.

stealthy1 said:
Elon stated (in his OO presser). that he knew this one was false. How many others are?
Click to expand...
It's true that the money was never sent. But the Biden administration, through the USAID, allotted the money.
  • Like

Denial is not a river if Africa.
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To be clear, welkin is NOT a moderator. His "label" is a forum error.
 
adjusterjack said:
No surprise that Democrats don't approve of the job he's doing.
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No surprise that MAGA thinks Trump and Musk are doing a good job or, let alone, good people. It's so weird how Republicans, which is basically MAGA, but Republicans were always about less government but simp for Trump and congressional Republicans actually trying to control more. And then you hate the rich but you simp for Musk. It's super weird. The MAGA cult is just mind boggling.
 
leslie82 said:
No surprise that MAGA thinks Trump and Musk are doing a good job or, let alone, good people. It's so weird how Republicans, which is basically MAGA, but Republicans were always about less government but simp for Trump and congressional Republicans actually trying to control more. And then you hate the rich but you simp for Musk. It's super weird. The MAGA cult is just mind boggling.
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You are saying that downsizing government and removing regulations is more control? That makes no sense. Government bureaucracies don't go away by themselves, it takes action to downsize government.
 
Mark_A said:
How one can criticize Musk for just documenting what Biden spent money on, is beyond me.
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Apparently you've not been following what Musk has been doing very closely. He's been doing, and trying to do, a lot more than "just documenting what Biden spent money on." Trump and his White Staff have had to pull Musk and tell him that some what he was trying to do wasn't permitted. Musk doesn't have a good grasp of just how much different government is from being CEO of Tesla. He's a bright guy and can learn it if it wants to take the time to do so, but just jumping in and doing whatever he thinks sounds good to him without first clearing it with White House is not of his brightest moves. He has the potential cause Trump grief if Trump and his staff don't keep him on a fairly short leash.
 
Mark_A said:
You are saying that downsizing government and removing regulations is more control? That makes no sense. Government bureaucracies don't go away by themselves, it takes action to downsize government.
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You are apparently missing the point. It is more control when Trump seeks to achieve those goals by usurping the power of the other branches of government or take actions that he lacks power to take under the Constitution and federal statutes. In short, how he achieves his goals is as important achieving the goals he's set. If he does it by taking actions that he doesn't have the authority to do then he's attempting to consolidate more power in the White House. That's dangerous to a democratic republic. The founders split power between three branches because they knew full well from their experience with King George III what having most power concentrated in one person or institution does to the freedom of the public. We would be worse off with a King Donald even if you liked some of the things he'd do with that power.
 
cbg said:
Personally, I don't know a soul that supports the Trump administration on anything. Even my Republican friends are aghast and cringing.
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I said it was a small majority, as determined by a scientific sampling of respondents. Part of that means that a random sample was selected, and that there were sufficient numbers of respondents to meet accepted confidence levels and margin of error rates of the results.

At this point, it doesn't matter because Trump was elected, unless you think he stole the election and/or that Trump is not a legitimate president (for which I expect to see some evidence to support that).
 
Tax Counsel said:
Apparently you've not been following what Musk has been doing very closely. He's been doing, and trying to do, a lot more than "just documenting what Biden spent money on." Trump and his White Staff have had to pull Musk and tell him that some what he was trying to do wasn't permitted. Musk doesn't have a good grasp of just how much different government is from being CEO of Tesla. He's a bright guy and can learn it if it wants to take the time to do so, but just jumping in and doing whatever he thinks sounds good to him without first clearing it with White House is not of his brightest moves. He has the potential cause Trump grief if Trump and his staff don't keep him on a fairly short leash.
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Musk has not been given the power to implement any ideas unilaterally. He is analyzing the situation and making suggestions as to how the federal government (with 2.4 million employees) can be run more efficiently and also obviously exposing government expenditures (besides payroll costs) such as occurs from grants issued by USAID.

What you are also saying is that some of Musk's ideas cannot be legally implemented (even by Trump), and that is fine, but Musk is not actually implementing them himself, just suggesting what needs to be done. How many of the other 2.4 million federal government employees were elected or confirmed by Congress? Whether or not Trump can legally do them will be decided by the courts, and Trump has said he will abide by their decisions, but obviously will appeal any adverse decisions to SCOTUS.

All of this complaining about executive branch government usurping power unconstitutionally is just a cover for the fact that some people don't agree that any changes need to made. What Trump is doing is not even close to the unconstitutional power grab by Biden, such as as cancelling student debt and forcing people to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Congress created very strict rules regarding student debt, such as not even allowing them to be cancelled in bankruptcy. Even though SCOTUS over-ruled Biden on both those issues and ruled he didn't have the power to do them, Biden continued to cancel more student debt just days before he left office.

The truth of the matter is that Trump is trying to downsize and reduce the role of the Federal government in the lives of Americans and return power to the states and to the people (aka the 10 Amendment of the US Constitution), which is the exact opposite of grabbing power. The Democrats conversely, being strong Federalists, want the Federal government to control more things, not less.
 

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