Those Tax-Cuts Don't Taste So Good Coming Back UP

[Yonivore]

All those financial managers would have to be paid, and you can bet that their paychecks would come out of your investments, increasing the rate of return you would have to earn at a minimum level to eveb meet the rate of return you already earn on insured government bonds.

They don't cost that much.

[2centsworth]

All those financial managers would have to be paid, and you can bet that their paychecks would come out of your investments, increasing the rate of return you would have to earn at a minimum level to eveb meet the rate of return you already earn on insured government bonds.

Dan you don't believe anything you write. It's obvious your message is crafted to manipulate the uneducated.

[Obstructed_View]

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull .

[Spurminator]

Yeah, dammit, I don't want to have to pay a Financial Manager, so I'm just gonna leave my money in a fund with negligible growth.

I'm also going to fire my advertising and buying agencies because they take commission.

[Nbadan]

Dan you don't believe anything you write. It's obvious your message is crafted to manipulate the uneducated.

Really? How so?

[Nbadan]

They don't cost that much.

Well, the real costs would be even higher interest rates for everybody. Remember back to economics 101, there is a finite amount of credit available in the world, so when the U.S. government has to borrow more, as would happen if everyone was allowed to draw a percentage of their retirement money from SS instead of the government borrowing it at a very generous interest rate, interest rates go up for all borrowers.

[Nbadan]

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull .

Blah, my critics have been saying the same for 3 year now, but they've yet to prove me wrong. Marcus Bryant? Travis? Yonivore? Father Garduchi? I'm still waiting.

[Yonivore]

Blah, my critics have been saying the same for 3 year now, but they've yet to prove me wrong. Marcus Bryant? Travis? Yonivore? Father Garduchi? I'm still waiting.

We don't have to. The economy proves you wrong every day.

[scott]

Last time I checked Congress held the purse strings of the government and were under no obligation to fund the Executive budget proposal. Indeed many federal spending initiatives -- proposed in the budget -- go unfunded while earmarks, amended to important legislation, cons utes a tremendous amount of the budget in the form of pork barrel spending for cons uent pandering.

Last time I checked, the President held veto power and was under no obligation to fund the Congressional budget proposal. I'm glad he saved it to make sure that embryos get thrown in the trash can instead being used to cure disease though.

[ChumpDumper]

scott beat me to the veto feature by five hours.

[Yonivore]

Last time I checked, the President held veto power and was under no obligation to fund the Congressional budget proposal. I'm glad he saved it to make sure that embryos get thrown in the trash can instead being used to cure disease though.

Last time I checked much of the pork-barrel spending was attached as "earmarks" to legislation the President would have been foolhardy to veto (Things such as funding for military operations worldwide) and, which would have been overridden by Congress, anyway.

It is a red herring to say the President has much control over Congressional spending...except to say he could force a Congressional showdown and risk dangerous interruptions in essential funding by vetoing all the fat legislation and forcing the Congress to override. Now, give him the line item veto, and you'd be making some sense.

I do agree that he wasted political capital on using his first veto on a largely symbolic piece of legislation but, either way, it was a trap. Had he not vetoed, he would have been blasted for abandoning principle. He stood by his conviction on the matter. It was really a no win situation for the President.

[Yonivore]

Last time I checked, the President held veto power and was under no obligation to fund the Congressional budget proposal. I'm glad he saved it to make sure that embryos get thrown in the trash can instead being used to cure disease though.

Hey, scott. Here's an interesting set of commentaries on the recent ABA report blasting the President on signing statements. I'd be interested in your take.

STOLEN FROM POWERLINE BLOG:

What about the merits of the signing statement issue? I think one needs to keep in mind that the president has a sworn duty to uphold the U.S. Cons ution. This means that he must form opinions about what the Cons ution means and act upon those opinions. The view I'm articulating is neither a radical nor a conservative view. I learned it from the late, great cons utional law scholar Gerald Gunther, who was neither radical nor conservative. And, as I said earlier, the Clinton adminstration recognized the president's duty to defend the Cons ution on the many occasions when it used signing statements.

This view does not deprive the Supreme Court of the final say on matters of cons utional interpretation. Once the Supreme Court upholds the cons utionality of an enactment, it is the president's duty, in my opinion, to enforce that law. But in the absence of a Supreme Court decision, I believe that the president can and should refuse to enforce laws he considers uncons utional and, in the interest of candor, should state that intention in advance. Doing so does not violate his duty to take care that the laws be fully executed because, as Ed Whelan points out, the Cons ution is one of the laws (indeed, the supreme one) that the president must take care fully to execute.

The president does, however, have to power to veto legislation, and I agree with those who say that using that power (not a signing statement) ordinarily is the proper way for the president to defend the Cons ution from legislation he thinks is clearly uncons utional. A signing statement might well be the better response in the case where Congress passes legislation the enactment of which cannot wait, even though it has an uncons utional provision. But absent special cir stances, the best course is to use the veto power. If Congress overrides the veto, however, the president is back to square one and, if he considers the legislation uncons utional, he has the right to so state and to instruct the executive branch accordingly.

Signing statements also can be used when Congress passes legislation that the president believes is cons utional if construed one way but uncons utional if construed another. Here, it is proper for the president, rather than vetoing the legislation, to construe it in the "cons utional" way, and to explain what he is doing. This course is similar to the Supreme Court's practice of construing laws in ways that make them consistent with the Cons ution, and upholding them on that basis. When reviewing a statute which the president signed into law only after construing it through a signing statement, the Supreme Court can consider the president's construction of the law for what it thinks it's worth.

One of the other bloggers (Ed Whalen at NRO's Bench Memos) to which Powerline links deconstructs the ABA's argument here, here, and here. A couple of salient points:

The ABA task force’s central conclusion is that the President’s only choice, when presented a bill that has a provision that he believes is uncons utional, is to veto the bill. Here’s the task force’s reasoning (on pages 18-19): (A) The Presentment Clause (Article I, section 7, clause 2) provides that every bill which shall have passed both houses of Congress shall be presented to the President for signature or veto. (B) Under the Take Care Clause (Article II, section 3), the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” (C) Therefore, the President is obligated to faithfully execute all bills that become law; he may not sign a bill into law and refuse to enforce one of its provisions.

The problem with this reasoning is that proposition C does not follow from A and B. The easiest way to recognize this is to understand that the Cons ution is one of the “Laws” that the President “shall take Care … be faithfully executed.” Thus, when a bill has become law, the President has an obligation under the Take Care Clause not to enforce provisions of that bill that are uncons utional. That is true whether he has signed the law, whether it has been enacted in an override of his veto, or whether it was enacted before he became President. In those cases in which he has signed the law, a signing statement is one proper means of fulfilling his Take Care obligation.

When the President faces a massive appropriations bill that includes one indisputably uncons utional provision (such as a legislative veto that violates Chadha), the task force’s position is that the President’s only cons utional option is to veto the entire bill. The task force acknowledges (on page 23) “the rare possibility that a President could think it unavoidable to sign legislation containing what he believed to be an uncons utional provision.” But it still maintains that it is unacceptable for the President to sign the bill and address the uncons utional provision in a signing statement. This position is unworkable, if not crazy. The situation described by the task force is routine, not rare. For example, virtually every appropriations bill contains a provision that violates Chadha. The task force’s position would lead, at best, to an insane game of chicken between the President and Congress and, quite probably, to a collapse of governmental operations. [Which, I believe was one of the points I was trying to make. -- Yonivore] Is anyone on the task force awake and sentient?