Words and Phrases We Could Do Without

In the Musk-Trump regime, “appropriations” has come to mean something more like “suggestions” or “ceilings.”

In 2023, Congressional Research Service spelled out how the Constitution deals with funding the government:

“‘No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.’ This means that the power of the purse must be exercised through the lawmaking process, allowing Congress to craft the terms of appropriations or deny appropriations outright through legislation.”

Hmm. The Constitution leaves the president to execute the laws—including spending bills—not to supplant the legislative branch. Good to know.

The CRS continued:

“Appropriations acts provide funding in definite dollar amounts for specific purposes over limited periods of time. Once appropriations legislation has been enacted, the specified amounts, purposes, and time periods included impose legal constraints on the subsequent use of appropriated funds. Generally speaking, the executive branch is prohibited from (1) spending more than is appropriated, (2) spending less than is appropriated, and (3) spending for purposes other than those specified.”

How odd. So…where does it say that Elon Musk, or his subordinate President (PINO, President in Name Only) Donald Trump, can override Congress willy-nilly? Because it sure sounds like the duo is acting unconstitutionally and illegally in usurping Congress’s power to appropriate funds.

Maybe the problem (other than the incompetent humans involved) is the word: “appropriations.” Normally, we think of that as the “power of the purse,” the sole prerogative of the Congress to determine how much money will be sent. But in the Musk-Trump regime, “appropriations” has come to mean something more like “suggestions” or “ceilings.” In the current upside-down system, Congress approp- …. er… suggests how much money to spend—or if an agency or department will even remain to serve Americans, exist, and use our resources to do so.

Sure, lawmakers might return home from Washington, touting how much they have delivered to their district or state. But it’s all for show. When, say, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) tells Iowa farmers she “appropriated” tens of billions for USAID to buy food from farmers, but a more honest statement would be something in the vein of, “I gave a creepy billionaire my suggestion for how much to spend. He may have other ideas. It might be less. There might be no money at all!” Iowa farmers might well be dumbfounded that their elected senator has proven herself to be a bystander. Who knew that the real power to deliver now rests with someone who was never even on the ballot?

Imagine, for example, if Congress had appropriated a few hundred billion dollars to fund the Pentagon. If it were just a suggestion, President Obama (or Biden) could have hired a tech-savvy friend, sent him over to the Pentagon, got a report that the place was rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, and then frozen funding and sent everyone home. (Alternatively, Biden could have eliminated funding for privatized space programs such as Space-X or Blue Origin—to save on waste, fraud, and abuse, of course.) But up until Trump, such blatant disregard of our government’s structure would have resulted in a constitutional crisis, likely followed by impeachment hearings.

Republicans willing to stand by idly as the Musk-Trump junta performs the powers constitutionally allocated to them, effectively declares their own irrelevance. They are props in the Musk-Trump authoritarian show. The message to voters is clear, and we’re unafraid to amplify it: If you want a legislative branch and normal constitutional order, vote for the other guys.

The problem is far more serious and more nuanced, of course. It is not just the word “appropriations” that seems to have lost all meaning. Congress has spending and oversight power, and, in the case of the Senate, the power to render advice and consent to prevent unfit individuals from running the agencies and departments Congress has set up. There does not seem to be much of that going on.

So, let’s just be clear: “Appropriations” are really “suggestions,” and “Congress” is really a debating society (or maybe an anteroom for Fox News studios). Since there is no real appropriations process and no real legislature, it seems “separations of powers” need to go by the wayside. Increasingly, it seems the only word that has meaning is “autocrat.”

We should do away with any of those other words, as they reflect an operational democracy functioning under the rule of law. That, we plainly do not have at present.