Here is how Donald Trump will throw red meat to his base and exercise his desire to line-item veto items: impoundment. As Velshi, Ruhle, and their guest Stan Collender explain, all Trump has to do is decide which funds and programs he doesn't want to spend money on and then send a resolution to Congress rescinding that spending.
Collender doesn't think he'll even bother with the resolution. "My impression is that the president is going to act a little more autocratically and decide he's just not going to spend the money and dare Congress to stop him," Collender said. "He is going to violate the law, not obey it, not apply it."
He went on to point to the $120 million appropriated by Congress to investigate Russian hacking of the 2016 election that Trump simply refused to spend.
"He didn't spend that and didn't inform Congress of that, so there's precedent," Collender said. "It fits Trump's personality perfectly."
But what about consequences, you ask? If we had a Republican Congressional majority that was actually concerned about the rule of law, they could act through oversight and legislation, not to mention impeachment, but we don't. The only real-life consequence would be holding them accountable at the ballot box. Trump knows he can flout the law and do what he wants because there are no checks on him at the moment.
As Stephanie Ruhle observed, "What it sounds like is we're going to be left with gridlock. and gridlock is what millions of Americans voted against."
Honestly, gridlock would be the best case scenario. The real harm is the constant erosion of the rule of law, which is what everything in this republic rests upon.
Collender summed it up this way: "There is little impact in what's going on, that is the President not obeying a law. But there is a moral and ethical impact of signing a deal, agreeing to a deal and backing out."
Yes, well. Let's ask the NAFTA negotiators how anxious they are to renegotiate anything with Cadet Bone Spurs. He doesn't know how to keep to the contours of a deal, even when that deal is a budget that he approved by signing it. If he cared so much about specifics in that thing he signed, he should have vetoed it and accepted the consequences for shutting down the government.
As for the enablers in Congress, we know how to change that. VOTE.
