There are more than 600 serving federal district judges across the United States. Democrats managed to find two of the 600+ to “order” the executive branch to divert $5 billion in money set aside for natural disaster relief to partially fund food stamps for November.
For his part, Trump seems willing enough to go along with the charade. From The Hill newspaper,
Donald Trump indicated Friday he would fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) if given “the appropriate legal direction” after a federal judge ordered officials to spend an emergency fund for the program.
The emergency fund includes only $5 billion. The cost to feed the 42 million beneficiaries who can’t feed themselves is $9 billion, per month. Are we going to make the 42 million fight it out, Mad Max-style?
The Hill notes the mismatch,
The roughly $5.25 billion fund is not enough to fully cover November benefits for the food assistance program, which will cost the government upward of $9 billion.
So what to do? NBC News quotes from the Rhode Island-based federal judge,
The shutdown of the government through funding doesn’t do away with SNAP. It just does away with the funding of it.
A distinction without a difference. The judge goes on to say,
But, he added that if the department finds that the money in the contingency fund is insufficient, then the agency must use other funding sources to make those payments.
“Other funding?” What other funding? It looks like the Judge is going to bypass Congress and just order the Treasury to borrow the money to close the gap. Why not do that with every other program in the federal government? We can get rid of both the legislative and executive branches and just hsve a judge in Rhode Island operate the whole thing.
Not surprisingly, every Democrat in America took to social media to gloat over the judges’ rulings late today. I guess you take your victories where you find them.
Reading the victory-lap texts, you would come away thinking that SNAP funding was the primary cause of the government shutdown, not some 4th-order side effect.
Close enough for government work.
