How Do Democrats Negotiate With A President Who Says He Can Negate Any Deal?
President Donald Trump with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in the Oval Office
I’ll confess to just being an economist and not a lawyer or a political consultant, but my mother did raise me to have some common sense. In this shutdown, and actually before, Donald Trump is claiming that he could choose not to spend any funds he doesn’t feel like spending. He has carried it further with the shutdown, canceling major infrastructure projects in states and congressional districts represented by Democrats, but the point is that Trump claims discretion to do whatever he wants with federal spending.
The Republicans in Congress, and possibly the Republican Supreme Court, also say this is okay. If Trump wants to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress, even if the only reason is to punish his political opponents, this is apparently fine with Republican politicians.
In fact, Trump has gone so far as to pronounce himself generous for having given money allocated by Congress to blue states. This is like the bank teller calling themselves generous for giving you the $200 you withdrew from your checking account. But that is where our politics is right now.
In this context, what possible reason could the Democrats have for making a deal? Trump and the Republicans are openly telling them it means nothing. It would be like negotiating the price of a renovation project with a building owner, when the owner openly tells you that they will pay you only what they feel like, regardless of the negotiated price. (Yeah, I know that’s what Trump did in his business.)
Anyhow, maybe I’m missing something, but this seems an important part of the current impasse which is not getting anywhere near the attention it deserves. With prior presidents this would not have been an issue. It had long been the understanding, upheld by the courts, that the president must spend funds appropriated by Congress.
But with Trump and the Calvin Ball Republicans making up whatever rules they want, and the Roberts Supreme Court finding the justification in the Constitution, a deal doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It’s true that you can’t run a country this way, but there is no reason for the Democratic Party to give cover to a crazy charade.
There can be no deal without some real rules that Trump is bound by. Even a Republican politician should be able to understand that.
Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the 2016 book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.
Reprinted with permission from Dean Baker.
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