11-4-25 - 7am - Emergency Funding of SNAP

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What the hell, Michael?

Speaker 2 (00:00):
I tuned into eight fifty KOA at nine oh seven yesday,
expecting to hear the situation with Michael Brown, and you
were nowhere to be found. But on the bright side,
what I did here was a huge step up from
what I was used to hearing.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Does he not realize that we could cut off his
weekly checks for taxpayer relief shots? I don't think he
hasn't puffed this through. He needs he needs to land
that airplane. Quit looking over Manhattan as he flies around

(00:38):
up there doing whatever he's doing up there. He lands,
he needs to land, get us some taxpayer relief shots. Otherwise,
you know, we got we got people lined up. It
takes place, and they're actually better looking too, and they're
willing to pay us. So he got that problem. I'm

(01:00):
not about to snap again after snapping through that. How
many more? How many hours we have to have left
Dragon before we move over there? Oh hours? I don't
I don't know, hours of radio. I don't know. Aren't
you excited about it? I'm already over there at that time, slide.

(01:21):
It doesn't bother me. What everybody keeps asking me, Are
you excited or you excited? You're excited. The part that
excites me is the fact that I don't have to
leap frog studios all day long. Oh you mean you
can just PLoP your fat ass in one chair and
then just stay there and just roll around in there.
Yeah yeah, okay, all right, who's there bringing your breakfast

(01:43):
in the morning? You just have to go get that yourself,
that's true. Yeah, I don't have to go pete down
on the third floor. Oh, by the way, by the way,
I went into the fourth floor, okay. Decided to wait
and hold it till next hour because I wanted to
find I walked in and there's there are no signs. Okay,
the water looks all looks clear. Okay, it looks like

(02:04):
it's usable. But I didn't want to dare, like, you know,
expel anything and then try to you know, either walk
away in an auto flushes, or to touch anything, or
or to push handle to flush on one of the toilets.
I decided to just I can wait till next hour.
It's sketchy around here. It's so sketchy. You must have

(02:26):
just put a you know, like a outhouse and the
not put it out of here in the in the
in the circle. We're on the balcony. Just be off
the balcony, you know. Actually, and I think about that
sometimes I go on the balcony, you know where studios
see it. I'm doing the weekend show. It's actually kind
of a nice balcony because the trees are right up

(02:47):
against it, and there's you know, you can actually down
so you can see some grass and stuff. You can
see the generators too. Of course, maybe I could peel
on the generators. That's still work there. An Obama appointed
judge with a name of John J. McConnell. He's the
one who's recent order compelling Trump to use emergency funds

(03:08):
to pay the November Snap benefits. I read through it.
I think it's a little shortsighted, but more importantly, I
think it might be an unlawful order. Now. He issued
it in late October, he issued it at the end
of the month. It directs the administration to draw from

(03:29):
the Snap Contingency Reserve so they can issue benefits even
though Congress has not appropriated funds for fiscal year twenty
twenty six. For those of you who don't realize it,
we're in fiscal year twenty twenty six, which started October one.

(03:52):
Now the problem is not only a practical problem, but
I think it's a constitutional problem, because the order provides
at best a few weeks of reprieve for the beneficiaries,
and at worst, it compels the executive branch to commit
and he'll degal act spending money that Congress has not

(04:12):
yet appropriated because they've run out of money. The continuing
I want you to think about it in this way.
The Continuing Resolution acts as an appropriation. It just says
to the executive branch, continue to spending, continue spending at

(04:33):
current levels through the terms of or the term of
this executive this continuing Resolution. Now, once that expires, and
i'd have to see if I get it my notes,
but they're running up on the original expiration date of
this Continuing Resolution, so I don't know that it's going

(04:56):
to get anywhere. Now Trump's Trump has chimed in. He
chimed in a couple of days ago in truth Social
he wrote, our government lawyers do not think we have
the legal authority to pay snap with certain moneys that
we have available. And now two courts have issued conflicting
opinions on what we can and cannot do. I do
not want Americans to go hungry just because the radical

(05:19):
Democrats refuse to do the right thing and reopen the government.
In all caps, Therefore, I have instructed our lawyers to
ask the court to clarify how we can legally fund
SNAP as soon as possible. It is already delayed enough
due to the Democrats keeping the government closed through the
monthly payment date, and even if we get immediate guidance,
it will unfortunately be delayed while states get the money out.

(05:43):
He continues that if we are given the appropriate legal
direction by the court, it will in all caps, be
my honor. He's so funny, be my honor to provide
the funding, just like I did with military and law
enforcement pay. He's got a really interesting way of capitalizing
certain words that grammatically should not be capitalized. But I digress.

(06:04):
He continues. The Democrats should quit this charade where they
hurt people for their own political reasons, and immediately, in
all caps again, reopen the government. If you use SNAP benefits,
call this in the Democrats and tell them to reopen
the government now in all caps, here's crying Chuck Schumer's

(06:24):
office number to zero two two two four sixty five
four to two let me repeat that in case you're
interested in leaving a or attempting to leave a voicemail,
and what I am certain is a message that you
will get that says the number you've reached, their mailbox

(06:46):
is full. You gotta try it to zero two two
two four sixty five four to two. Now, if you
can leave a message, be polite and tell Chuck Schumer
that hey, quit worrying about AOC and just open the government.
The issue is not whether hungry families deserve assistance. We've

(07:10):
debated that. In fact, I've got a story out in
New Mexico I want to share with you in a minute.
But the real issue is whether a federal judge can
actually compel the executive branch, in this case, the President
of the United States, to violate the Constitution's Appropriations Clause
and the Anti Deficiency Act. I think the answer based
on statute, based on precedent, and frankly, the very architecture

(07:34):
and the structure of the Constitution is an unequivocal No.
Let's think about how this operates. How this works. The
SNAP program operates under the Food and Nutrition Act of
eight that makes benefits an appropriated entitlement. Now that phrase matters.

(07:55):
It's not like Social Security. This is an appropriate entitlement program.
That means that Congress must annually appropriate the money for
the benefits, even though the eligibility rules the requirements to
be eligible are permanent law. So in practical terms, that

(08:17):
means that every year Congress sets aside a lump sum
to fund the benefits, and then typically a contingency reserve
to cover unexpected short falls. Now what could be the
unexpected short falls go back to its annually appropriated funds.
It's an appropriated entitlement, but the requirements to obtain those

(08:42):
funds are set in permanent statute. So you look at
your current program. You have ten participants, but the and
so you add a contingency because you might have fifteen
that qualify during that year where the money's already been appropriated,

(09:02):
So you appropriate some additional money just in case five
more people get added to those ten that are already
on the program. The current reserve, which is about three
billion dollars, was authorized for use only when Congress has
already appropriated snap funds that then prove insufficient. In other words,

(09:29):
the reserve supplements the let me rephrase this, the reserve
supplements the appropriated monies. It doesn't replace them. It's for
exactly what I described. They've appropriated the contingency. So if
the amount they have already appropriated turns out to be short,

(09:52):
then you can use that. It can't replace what they've
already appropriated, which is what this court's trying to do. Now. USDA,
the Department of Vague that administer SNAP, has consistently maintained
that interpretation, and in October twenty five memo issue during
the shutdown the USD, the USDA very explicitly said that

(10:18):
the contingent Contingency Reserve monies are not legally available to
pay November benefits absent a new appropriation. It could only
be used to make up shortfalls in an already funded
fiscal year to address disasters like hurricanes or floods. Now,

(10:39):
this judge's order directly contradicts that statutory understanding, and it
forces the executive branch in this case, USDA to do
what itself has already declared to be unlawful. So think
about it this way. If this judge can order the
executive to spend money that Congress has yet to appropriate,

(11:00):
why not just simply ordered Congress to appropriate all the money.
I mean, he's already said this money is in the
contingency fund, it's appropriated, but it's for a specific use.
He's basically saying, I don't care what its use is.
I'm telling you to use it for current benefits. Well,
if he can do that, why not just tell Congress?

(11:24):
And I think if you're paying attention, you have to
understand where I'm going with this. Why doesn't the judge
just say, Congress spend whatever the appropriated amount is for
fiscal year twenty six, just go ahead and spend that money.
Because if he can order the executive to spend money

(11:47):
that Congress has not appropriated, again, I ask a simple question,
why don't you just tell Congress to appropriate the funds?
Why don't you just order Congress to do what the
COMPS Institution says is exclusively their job to spend money.
So Josh Holly censor for Missouri, he introduced the Keep

(12:11):
Snap Funded Act, which the Democrats voted against. So forget
the politics of whether he should have done that or
didn't do or shouldn't have done that, because I've got
a different opinion maybe than some others. But he did
do it, and the Democrats voted against it, So that
proves to me that this issue is a political issue,

(12:36):
it's not an administrative issue. So now that means that
in both cases the judge would be violating the separation
of powers. He's trying to tell Congress how to do
their job. He's trying to tell Congress you must go
spend Wait a minute, Constitution says that Congress, the House,

(13:00):
and the Senate. In fact, revenue bills have to start
in the House, just like this did, has to be
passed by the Senate. If they don't agree, they got
to go to the Conference committee. Then they agree, and
they go back and vote on and again. That's how
it worked. That's how the Constitution explains to us precisely
how it works. And this judge is stepping in and saying, man,
you know what, just go spend the money. That simple

(13:25):
contradiction exposes what I say is the first problem with
this ruling. It's shortsighted. Even if the Department of Act
were to obey this ruling, the funds in that contingency
reserve would only keep snap running for maybe two maybe
three weeks. So what happens once those reserves are exhausted again,

(13:47):
we would face a funding void. Worse, it is now
drained to fund intended for actual emergencies, So that means
there will be fewer resources available if there is a
natural disaster hits. In effect, here's what the Court's done.
It sacrifices future disaster readiness in order to secure for

(14:09):
him at least a short term political point. But I
think it goes a lot worse than that. It's a
constitutional problem. Ready, let's go to Article one, section nine
clause seven of the US Constitution. If you're reading along,
pull your Constitution out. Article one. That's the exist that's

(14:32):
the legislative branch. Section nine clause seven. I think the
language is pretty unambiguous. In fact, it's pretty clear. It says,
and I quote, no money. No money shall be drawn
from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.

(14:54):
So the court's ordering them to do something constitution says
they can't do. The Supreme Court ref firm principle repeatedly.
It started back in nineteen thirty seven in a case
called Soap, the US Cincinnati Soap, to be precise. They
did it again in nineteen seventy six US versus McCollum.

(15:15):
Those two cases make clear that the executive can only
spend what Congress explicitly tells the executive that can spend,
and if you spend otherwise, that's to violate the Constitution itself.
The president, I don't care who holds the office, cannot
spend one single dollar without congressional authorization. Congress, you mean again,

(15:36):
this is something that this is something that truly ninth
graders or certainly high schoolers ought to be learning in
some sort of government class. And that is Congress holds
the purse strings and no court can pull those strings.
That's up to the Congress. Now, let's think about the
Anti Deficiency Act. That actually makes what I just say

(16:00):
even stronger. It puts it into legal principle. That act,
the Anti Deficiency Act makes it illegal for any officer
or employee of the federal government to make any expenditure
or any obligation in excess of an appropriation. And in fact,
it carries even criminal penalties. Now it has administrative penalties too,

(16:20):
like you know, you got to return the money, or
you know you've got to stop the program, or you
could get fired, but you could also be criminally charged
for it. Now, why would we put that, Why would
Congress pass something like the Anti Deficiency Act? Because that
makes certain that when Congress doesn't act, the government comes
to a halt. That stoppage is not an accident. It

(16:45):
is a constitutional design. It is a mechanism that forces
political resolution through the elected branches. Because this is a
political issue, it is not a legal issue. So let's
go by to the judge for a second. His ruling
puts the administration in an impossible position because if Trump decides, okay,

(17:08):
I'll comply with the order, then what happens. That means
that Trump has violated the Constitution and he's violated the
Anti Deficiency Act. Now if he refuses, what's he doing.
He's defying a court order. So that this judge has
an essence demanded that the president commit an illegal act.

(17:31):
But it's even more absurd than that. If the court
can compel the president to spend without appropriations, why doesn't
the court just compel the Senate to pass the continuing resolution? Well,
because either way that would circumvent the same constitutional framework.
Neither is lawful. The courts cannot take Congress's power of

(17:52):
the purse any more than it can draft legislation from
the bench, and this is not theoretical'll explain why.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
I know the president listens to your program.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
It's a president.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
Don't do it.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
It's a trap.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
They're gonna sue you for breaking the constitution if you
do it. They're gonna sue you for contempt the court
if you don't.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Don't do it.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
Oh, you do it. It's a crap. Since you're talking
about appropriating snap money, why doesn't Congress just do it
on themselves? Who needs a judge's order? Hm hmm.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Wait a minute, I didn't get that. Can you do
that when again, Dragon, I'm gonna address that.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Since you're talking about appropriating snap money, why doesn't Congress
just do it on themselves? Who needs a judge's order?

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Hm hmm. Well that's the problem. The Democrats aren't doing it.
We we have a can. Maybe I'm maybe I'm reading
too much into your talk back. So the how's the
rep re Presentatives pass the continuing Resolution? That is an

(19:05):
appropriations act. It funds all departments and agencies. It funds
the entire executive branch, the Supreme Court. It funds everything
at the federal level through a certain period. It's an
appropriation and it's at the same appropriation level as the

(19:28):
previous spending levels so that they can enter into negotiations
to actually pass a budget. So that's what it does.
The House has done their job. Bipartisan Democrats and Republicans
voted to pass this CR. They send it. In fact,

(19:50):
let me just quit calling it a CR, although technically
that's what it is. They passed an appropriations bill via
a CR, passed it in the House, send it to
the Senate following constitutional procedure. The Senate gets it, the
Democrats filipbuster it, which means they won't allow it to

(20:12):
come to a vote until they stop debate. To stop
debate in the Senate requires sixty votes. We only have
fifty three Republicans plus jd Vance, the Vice President if
he were to vote, so we need five. We need
technically seven to get to sixty Democrats some have already

(20:34):
said that they will do that, like John Fetterman, that
would just simply stop debate. It's the technical term is
invoke cloture. Once the Senate stops debate, then the bill
goes to the hat. I mean he goes to the
floor of the Senate for a simple majority vote. You
only need at the minimum fifty votes because the Vice

(20:59):
Press the Senate's fifty one hundred senators. If all you
get is fifty, then the Vice president can come vote.
He can break the vote that Appropriations Bill i e.
The CR passes. But if they get some additional Democrats
and they can get to sixty votes, then it stops

(21:21):
debate in votes cloture. He goes to the floor of
the Senate, and as long as they can get fifty
one votes, which means even a couple of Republicans vote
against it. If Ran Paul is still against it, he
can actually vote against it when it gets to that
floor vote. That's where we are in terms of the
legislative process. But as I said at the end of

(21:42):
the last segment, the Court can't take the power that
is reserved exclusively to the Congress to spend money, just
as it can't just draft legislation and say here's a
new law. You got to follow this new law. And
I'm not just being theoretical. During other shutdowns, administrations of

(22:05):
both parties Obama, Trump's first term Biden's term have adhered
to the same constitutional limits. Let's go back to twenty eighteen.
I know makes your brain hurt. Twenty eighteen, the Department
of ag found a really creative way to issue February

(22:27):
snap benefits early because they have a technical authority from
an expiring continuing resolution, so they were operating under continuing resolution.
It had not yet expired yet, so they pulled that
money forward to beat the new CRS deadline and got
the benefits out early. But it did not tap the

(22:51):
contingency reserve for the regular benefits. That reserve existed and
remained in place, and nobody screamed to them to you
that because they had found a way around it. The
Government Accountability Office the GOAO later determined that even that
early issuance probably pushed the bounds of legality. The consistent

(23:17):
practice has been to avoid spending any unappropriated funds, no
matter how pressing the need is. So now this idea
that a federal district trial judge at the bottom of
the latter well one wrung up from a magistrate can
somehow now up end the entire constitutional framework, that is

(23:39):
judicial activism of the most dangerous kind. Courts exist according
to the Constitution, shows you how far off we've gotten.
Courts exist to interpret law, not to write appropriation bills,
and the Supreme Court is long warned against that kind
of encroachment. Justice Scalia once said this, the Constitution does

(24:05):
not permit the judiciary to usurp the functions of the
legislative branch under the guise, I would say pretense of
judicial interpretation, because in our system of government, one of
the most important aspects is the separation of powers. That
is a structural safeguard to make sure that one branch

(24:29):
of government doesn't become the king and just rule everything.
If somebody wanted to defend this judge's ruling claiming that
somehow humanitarian urgency justifies the court acting unconstitutionally. Urgency, political

(24:56):
urgency in particular, cannot override the constitution. Every unconstitutional act
is undertaken for what somebody always believes, Oh, it's a
good cause. The framers design the Constitution and our framework
of governing precisely to avoid and resist that kind of urgency,

(25:18):
that kind of temptation. James Madison Federal's number fifty one quote,
you must first enable the government to control the governed,
and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
What did he mean, Well, if you allow a judge

(25:39):
to spend money when congressional will not to spend money. Well,
that's the very opposite self restraint. Congress is making political decisions.
The judge is trying to insert himself into political decisions.
He is violating the separation of powers. And in addition

(26:00):
to that, this really is a perverse precedent. I want
you to think about it this way. If this single
judge can compel spending on SNAP during a funding lapse,
why can't the judge enforce spending on other programs? Could

(26:22):
the judge order the DoD to pay soldiers during the shutdown,
or the Department of Transportation to keep funding highway projects.
The logic of this judge, Judge McConnell's order knows no bounds.
It's limitless. What he has practically done is invite a
judicial takeover of the fiscal policy of the United States

(26:46):
of America, which is squarely reserved to the legislative branch
Article one of the Constitution. And the Framers put it
that way because they feared precisely this kind of drift
a power from one to another, the slow but steady
erosion of the legislature's control over our money. Now you

(27:12):
might object that SNAP recipients, we don't them to suffer
becausement because the Congress is dysfunctional. Well, that's true, that's
absolutely true. There are some SNAP beneficiaries that I feel
sorry for. There are others that I hope that this

(27:33):
teaches them a lesson, don't rely on the government. But
regardless of what I think, that's the material. The remedy
is in Congress. The remedy is not the court system.
We cannot forget that the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive
authority to spend money. I challenge you go read Article

(27:56):
three of the US Constitution. That's the judiciary. You tell
me where it gives the judiciary power to spend money.
It does not, Michael.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
My question is what can be done with a rogue
judge like this one, who's sort of writing law from
the bench.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
There's got to be some provision for that. There is.
It's called impeachment, and they can impeach. They can impeach.
That's a political process, So they would have to start
the impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives. There would
have to be enough to pass articles over to the Senate.
That you'd have to have enough votes in the Senate
two thirds to convict them and remove them from the bench.

(28:36):
It has been done before. The claim here would be
that he has exceeded his authority, he's violated the separation
of powers. And if there are other instances where he's
done this, I think that it would really look if
we really want to start holding people accountable, is there
are political remedies, And this is what the Framers did.

(28:58):
That's so brilliant. They established political remedies for us to
do this. But it starts, unfortunately with us. I say
unfortunately with us, because do you think for a New
York second, I'm not sure what a New York second
will be after a Communist takes over, but right now
New York Second is pre damn fast. But right now,

(29:20):
under an American New York City second, how long do
you think it would be before anybody in the House
of Representatives, with maybe a few exceptions, would stand up
and draft articles of impeachment and then really push hard,
including getting the Speaker and the Whip and the Minority
leader everybody they can on board. Now, they probably never

(29:42):
get the Minority leader, but at least get the Speaker
of the House, the Majority leader, and the whip involved
and get enough people, enough Republicans, maybe a few Democrats,
to actually impeach a judge. They won't. Now. If if
the country, if you and I as members of our

(30:05):
respective congressional districts were mad enough and enough of us
were upset about this and we put the pressure on,
it might occur. But that's what it's going to take.
Because I don't depend on them to do anything. I
take you to New Mexico.

Speaker 4 (30:24):
Funding was set to freeze for millions of Americans to
federal judges order the Trump administration to keep the program
running using emergency funds. SNAP recipients have told us their
benefits have not been working. Julian Pattaz spoke with some
who explained why these benefits are so important.

Speaker 5 (30:42):
The first thing I did was I'm calling a call out.
When I hired to see the world dollars, my chest
went into my throat. Maggiotto Gon has been a SNAP
recipients for more than three decades. Even with these benefits,
she says she also relies on food banks to get
enough food. I have depended on the benefits since the
nineteen nineties, and it's detrimental to my life. If I

(31:05):
don't get them.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
There are more than four. I've depended on those benefits since
the nineteen nineties and it's detrimental to my life if
I don't get them. I'll send this over to Dragon
so you can put it up. This comes to us
from the ABC affiliate in Albuquerque, sent to me by Alex.
Thanks Alex. I don't know. I don't know this woman

(31:29):
from Adam. Maybe she's got some debilitating disease that she's
had for thirty years and I can't see it on
the video. I don't know, but three decades of food
welfare and food banks, that's what happens. You wonder why

(31:49):
these programs grow out of control, and you doubt me
when I say that all we do is we incentivize
people to stay on the programs, and the people that
administer the programs are incentivized to keep them on the programs,
to add more people to the programs. And you think
that I'm the nutjob. You think that I'm the cold hearted,
uncompassionate ahole that thinks that this is adway out of control,

(32:15):
pre decades, pre decades, since the nineteen nineties, and it's
detrimental to my life if I don't get them