ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

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Raycheetah wrote:

I'll just leave y'all with this, and let you folks figger it out:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/text-letter-president-speaker-house-representatives-president-senate-21/

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Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate

Budget & Spending

Issued on: March 23, 2018

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

In accordance with section 7058(d) of division K of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 (H.R. 1625; the “Act”), I hereby designate as an emergency requirement all funding so designated by the Congress in the Act pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, for the accounts referenced in section 7058(d).

The details of this action are set forth in the enclosed memorandum from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Sincerely,

DONALD J. TRUMP

Me, I couldn't be happier. =^[.]^=

Wow, talk about creative use of legislation and a potential shitstorm of epic proportions.

In essence, Trump is using laws regarding rerouting of defense spending to route money FROM Executive branch assistance to Haiti TO the Wall. This request now goes to the House Appropriations Committee, where if they approve it the Wall is funded, and if they don't approve it... well, there's actually no provision for what happens then because the law logistically assumes it will be approved, so since the President submitted the request he's all good to go. This means that when the House Appropriations Committee dissapproves (as I predict) this will likely go to the federal courts, and become another "travel ban" where the Ninth Circuit (or some similar) temporarily bans Wall funding and it might even go to SCOTUS.

Even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump, at that point he'll have convinced his base that he did all he could for the Wall. He basically just won that campaign promise... unless the House responds with impeachment for ignoring the Committee's disapproval.

Hell, the California AG is suing President Trump for including a citizenship question on the 2020 census. It's nothing new. Meanwhile, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been doing preliminary work (soil tests, etc.) on the wall since last summer... =^[.]^=

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump, at that point he'll have convinced his base that he did all he could for the Wall. He basically just won that campaign promise... unless the House responds with impeachment for ignoring the Committee's disapproval.

I think I would be more surprised about this than I would about discovering that the flat earth/lizard person conspiracy is true.

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SuicideAll wrote:

Pretty much time to close this thread down. No one gives a shit anymore.

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Raycheetah wrote:

Hell, the California AG is suing President Trump for including a citizenship question on the 2020 census. It's nothing new. Meanwhile, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been doing preliminary work (soil tests, etc.) on the wall since last summer... =^[.]^=

What are the arguments for and against this?

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DurianMcgregor wrote:

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Raycheetah wrote:

Hell, the California AG is suing President Trump for including a citizenship question on the 2020 census. It's nothing new. Meanwhile, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been doing preliminary work (soil tests, etc.) on the wall since last summer... =^[.]^=

What are the arguments for and against this?

Including the question entice certain people to lie or fail to fill the survey, it will make the census inaccurate. The census require the actual enumeration of people, rather than sampling or estimation. The constitution requires the federal government to get an ACTUAL count of ALL the people in the country – whether citizen or non-citizen.

as someone that has worked on the Canadian census twice, that question is nothing out of the ordinary. There's plenty of people that travel to the US for various reason and they aren't citizens or they are in the process for citizenship.

Illegals are likely to ignore the census from the get go and this question won't change anything.

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faerwin wrote:

as someone that has worked on the Canadian census twice, that question is nothing out of the ordinary. There's plenty of people that travel to the US for various reason and they aren't citizens or they are in the process for citizenship.

Illegals are likely to ignore the census from the get go and this question won't change anything.

"US Commerce Department stated that they made this decision after the Department of Justice requested inclusion of the question "to better enforce the Voting Rights Act." "

Not in America. It is a scare tactic. It will lead to lower response rates, because some immigrants fear the information could end up in the hands of law enforcement. The census is also a basis for deciding how to apportion political power, and billions in federal funds.

BTW: This mean whether 11 Millions illegal immigrants are counted is a big deal.

I'd be highly surprised if the respond rate of illegals is really affected by this. Like I said, illegals are much more prone than anyone else to refuse to answer the census from the get go.

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deathflower wrote:

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DurianMcgregor wrote:

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Raycheetah wrote:

Hell, the California AG is suing President Trump for including a citizenship question on the 2020 census. It's nothing new. Meanwhile, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been doing preliminary work (soil tests, etc.) on the wall since last summer... =^[.]^=

What are the arguments for and against this?

Including the question entice certain people to lie or fail to fill the survey, it will make the census inaccurate. The census require the actual enumeration of people, rather than sampling or estimation. The constitution requires the federal government to get an ACTUAL count of ALL the people in the country – whether citizen or non-citizen.

Some people already do lie to census takers for various reasons. Some of the census training and methods help to reduce the impact of this. The usual methods of random sampling to eliminate this kind of error don't apply when you are trying to evaluate the whole enchilada.

The Citizenship question doesn't mean non-Citizens won't be counted, any more than the sex question means men or women won't be counted. Unless the SCOTUS precedent is overturned (which would take a piece of legislation directly challenging it) the non-citizens will still count towards apportionment of electoral college votes.

On the aspect of using Presidential directive to re-route funding, if it was good enough for Obama for most of his presidency, than Trump's opponents shouldn't be criticizing him for doing the same thing. If they critiqued Obama for it, than it is fair game.

That's the problem with passing "Omnibus" legislation, instead of a budget. Congress does control the purse strings. They just failed to do their job, again, and again, and again.

I was just reading an article someone linked about Thomas Jefferson, and the version of the Constitution he proposed (which had some backing from John Adams, but not much support otherwise). One of the things Jefferson thought was critical from the outset was term limits for everyone. He considered the lack of them in the Constitution to be its greatest flaw.

http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring07/jefferson.cfm