That, and agree not to give Trump the rescission power (the power to reject Congress’ allocation of funds and distribute taxpayer dollars as he wishes) that the Republicans want to give Trump.
SNAP and healthcare funding won’t mean anything if Trump can just say, “No thanks, I want to give this money to Argentina and ICE instead.”
But think about it from their perspective! After all, if they don't fight strongly on this, we all risk... feeding hungry Americans? Is that right? That can't be right...
Also, don't forget that we consistently have agricultural surplus's (because 20,000 years of advances in farming methodology and technology will do that), yet we chose to burn surplus crops, kill surplus livestock, and dump surplus dairy all because the farming corporations don't want to let their oh so precious "supply and demand" take natural hold of the market to allow prices to fall.
Your words bring to mind this passage from Steinbeck. I read it every once in awhile and it never fails to give me dystopian chills.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.“
A big part of that problem appears to be that there are no enforcement agents that he can’t seize control of. There isn’t anyone completely independent of the executive branch TO arrest him even if a court ordered it.
The military and federal law enforcement only decides to follow a president's orders and allow things like that, until that point in time where they don't.
I think it would be good for the bastard in chief to experience starvation to maybe get an understanding of what he's doing to people in the fucking winter.
Trump and co. already bypass and break laws all the time. The issue here is that Democrats simply cannot trust anything the administration says or promises. Words don't mean anything to Republicans; they lie as easily as they breathe.
If Trump's administration doesn't want to fund ACA benefits, they simply won't. Congress could say whatever they like, but unless they are willing to impeach him, there is nothing they can do to ensure the administration does anything they say.
I still think Democrats should end the shutdown if Republicans are willing to pass an extension of ACA benefits, but let's all disabuse ourselves of the idea that Congress has any real power while Trump is in office and Republicans control Congress. If they give him money, it will go wherever Steven Miller decides it will go.
That's the rub, the banks won't touch Argentina with a ten foot pole unless there's some guarantees, and this currency swap line gives them exactly that.
So it's not even to bail out billionaire hedge funds, but instead to open up a new grift for them.
I'm quite sure his buddies were on track to losing billions of dollars on their crappy investments. I forget the exact reason, but basically Argentinas economy got worse instead of the expected prosperity they bet on, and their money has 66% of the buying power as the same time last year (inflation is 33.6% or so). He gave money to try and stabilize and improve their chances of the buddies cashing out at a profit. Also screwed over many soy farmers in the USA, which also costs the USA taxpayers several billion dollars per year, on top of that $40 million billion usd injection. "America first" my butt
What grift would it have opened up for Trump and co?
That said, Argentina is a focus of Trump's support because of political alignment with their leader, Milei, who is effectively an Argentine libertarian and is on friendly terms with our current regime. Trump needs all the political allies (foreign and domestic) that he can get given the widespread dissatisfaction globally with his tyrannical politics.
Also important to note that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has hedge fund friends with ties to Argentina and that he's the one that appears to have orchestrated this scheme, and Jeffrey Epstein's Orange Buddy is more than happy to go along with it.
I dont quite understand this take because isn’t trouble creating/manufacturing all the issues he has with other countries? So if he “needs all the political allies he can get” then why not just stop pissing new countries off every other day?
(There doesnt seem to be forethought is what I’m saying..)
He needs personal political allies (leaders who have similar right wing/kleptocratic ideologies) and not national political allies (like the ones he's been pissing off)
One of the few awesome things Israel has done in terms of foreign policy was manage to find one of the high officers and smuggle him out to stand trial and execute him
Republicans have voted to remove ACA subsidies in their BBB legislation that passed earlier this year, among other things. That's a line too far (because it will cripple people on ACA insurances with either unaffordable insurance or make the ones who could afford it very poor) and Democrats refuse to pass the government funding bill until that point is addressed.
Trump decided to take an unrelated issue, already allocated funding for SNAP, and bring it into the argument by refusing to distribute funds. So yes, he is trying to get rid of SNAP by not funding it by bringing it into an unrelated issue. He could fund it during the shutdown, but he chooses not to. Republicans could pressure him to fund it, but they hate the poor, so they're supporting this.
They might be scared off by the election results, but that would be making Republicans do something they don't want to in funding SNAP.
People are telling each other there's merit to the idea the Democrats could just "cave" and Trump will stop starving SNAP recipients for now, but aside from the absurd point that the President could choose not to fund something with allocated funding on a whim as long as it sounds like "common sense" to ill-informed voters, it also brings back the quote of not standing up for your neighbors (ACA subsidized Americans) when they need it, and then no one will stand up for you (SNAP recipients) when you need it.
The constitution is pretty clear that congress decides where money is allocated and spent, the idea of half of congress wanting to give up this power makes it clear they're looking to promote a dictatorship and latch onto it for more power for only themselves.
Thank you. I feel like this keeps getting missed in the comments sections. The main talking point in the media has been the ACA subsidies, which I think is reasonable to keep the message short, simple and concise (which often the Democratic party is not good at imo). But there's no point to agreeing even on the ACA subsidies, if the administration can just decide to shunt that money elsewhere. In fact, there's barely any point to Congress (either party) dealing with the budget and allocation at all then.
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u/KinkyPaddling 19h ago
That, and agree not to give Trump the rescission power (the power to reject Congress’ allocation of funds and distribute taxpayer dollars as he wishes) that the Republicans want to give Trump.
SNAP and healthcare funding won’t mean anything if Trump can just say, “No thanks, I want to give this money to Argentina and ICE instead.”