alt Hacker News>In my reality, POTUS is doing everything he can to grind down Congress's power of the purse.
And it hasn't been working well. DOGE failed, SCOTUS has not yet issued a final determination on pocket rescissions, and the Fed can only buy treasuries on the secondary market, meaning the bond market is in control. There is also the debt ceiling which requires Congress to raise it.
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adgjlsfhk1 • last Wednesday at 10:26 PM
potus has been successful in illegally dismantling whole agencies (e.g. usaid)
DOGE didn't "fail" to maim the power of the purse. It actually achieved that goal. It failed to produce savings for taxpayers. Totally different.
SCOTUS "hasn't issued a final determination" on almost any issue put in front of it in Trump 2. Yet they consistently land on "the administration can do what it wants while we delay actually ruling, even if several lower courts have ruled against this outcome after actually hearing the case at length."
The Fed's prohibition from buying Treasuries directly is only relevant if the FOMC is actually independent. If it's not, nothing prevents POTUS from saying "the Fed will buy $x in treasuries at $y," directing them to do so, and creating a clear arb opportunity for all the intermediary banks to buy and re-sell their slice.
Sure, that'd trigger a financial crisis, but that's kind of the whole problem with idiot demagogues: they trigger such crises as a matter of course.