So let me explain .
As you all know , the Czar is deeply into political philosophy — that was my major and my intellectual passion . My poor kids have endured the readings of John Locke , Jean- Jacques Rousseau , and The Federalist Papers since they were in diapers .
This is hardly spicy material of course . Most everyone read this stuff in the seventh grade . But , as with any religion , the simplicity of the core concepts underpinning our Constitution is what gives it lasting power .
And perhaps the simplest concept is separation of powers . Ambition checking ambition .
Congress vs . the President vs . the Courts .
The critical centerpiece of the Constitution : that these institutions would never align to serve one master ; other , perhaps , than the people themselves .
And as we all , indeed , learned in the seventh grade , Congress is the keeper of the “ purse .” They spend the money . And they dictate to the executive branch — whose job it is merely to execute on the laws and never write them — how money is to be spent .
This is done through something called the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution , and it is the primary way the power of the “ purse ” is leveraged . ( It is also why the government shuts down once in a while when the political parties — we ’ ll get to them — bicker .)
Essentially , Congress has to vote on every penny spent in order for any of the gears of government to turn . It ’ s a good thing , assuring the people ’ s representatives are the guiding hand between all funding of the machinery of the beast we call the federal government .
It ’ s actually a rather brilliant — if totally unwieldy — conceptual predicate for government operation , seemingly assuring government stays small and its operations within the understanding and eyesight of a handful of elected officials .
Of course , that ’ s not the way it actually works , but it is the way it was supposed to work .
While the elegance of the process has been corrupted by a government that has grown entirely beyond the contemplation of the framers , the core concept that the legislative branch controls the funding — even if through a legion of staffers and bureaucrats who work together in long shifts to provide funding directives in thousand-page funding tomes that are never read by the officials who vote on them — remained in place .
The executive branch could howl and moan , but Congress — and only Congress — could provide funding directives .
( Again , this separation of powers concept seems foreign and neutered in light of political parties where Trump can essentially tell a Republicanled Congress what to spend money on and they will do it . Very , very , very , very , very unconstitutional , but that is a misuse of the system by political conspirators — party members — and not a bedrock problem with the system itself .)
But Congress recently cheated ( in my view ) and passed off to an executive branch agency ( the CFPB ) the power to provide for its own funding via a portion of funds from the Federal Reserve that it grows and shrinks based upon the CFPB ’ s own activities in fining banks and finance companies .
Essentially , the CFPB is a perpetual motion machine that can determine its own funding levels , budget , and activities based upon its own actions in collecting money from American businesses .
It is its own little sovereign , capable of making its own laws ( regulations ) and enforcing those laws through its own executive operations ( enforcement ) and funding these operations through the fines it imposes and collects .
Very scary stuff . And plainly a Frankenstein ’ s monster of political concepts that ought to have been unplugged by the Supreme Court .
But . . . nope .
Only two justices agreed with the framers of the Constitution that this runaway nightmare is unconstitutional — Justices Alito and Gorsuch . They interposed a lengthy dissent , but I think a single line suffices to explain matters quite nicely . As Alito writes :
“ In short , there is apparently nothing wrong with a law that empowers the Executive to draw as much money as it wants from any identified source for any permissible purpose until the end of time .”
Yeah . That ’ s an issue .
Understand , I am less concerned about the CFPB here than I am about the wholesale modification of the operations of our government , from one where the executive is prevented from a wholesale money-grab by the tinfoil requirement of a semi-annual appropriations process to one where blank-check funding is afforded the President once every four years or so .
TROUTMANAMIN . COM • 23