The novel and untested approach has been introduced by Democratic lawmakers in at least four states.
Democratic legislators mostly in blue states are attempting to fight back against Donald Trump’s efforts to withhold funding from their states with bills that aim to give the federal government a taste of its own medicine.
The novel and untested approach — so far introduced in Connecticut, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin — would essentially allow states to withhold federal payments if lawmakers determine the federal government is delinquent in funding owed to them. Democrats in Washington state said they are in the process of drafting a similar measure.
These bills still have a long way to go before becoming law, and legal experts said they would face obstacles. But they mark the latest efforts by Democrats at the state level to counter what they say is a massive overreach by the Trump administration to cease providing federal funding for an array of programs that have helped states pay for health care, food assistance and environmental protections.
Not making a payment is seen as civil war? If its already at that point we’re already done.
However, realistically not making a payment won’t earn you bombs. It might earn guns though. What would that look like if a state withheld payment? Would a fed law enforcer with a gun go into an office, up to some state employee sitting an a cube responsible for making money transfers as part of their work, and have the gun in their face or threatening arrest if they don’t make the payment to the fed? Would it instead be indictments of state government officials, and perhaps jailing them? Who would they jail? The Governor that signed the bill into law? The state legislature for putting the measure forward?
When high level state officials or low level state office workers start getting arrested, that moves the game to a different level. That escalation may have knock on effects on the citizenry. This would be especially true if the reason the state would be withholding the payment from the fed would be for cutting of services from the fed.
Very simple.
The federal government would file a lawsuit asking the courts to freeze the bank accounts that contain the federal funds. The courts would most certainly grant such a motion.
While the court case played out, the federal government would continue on with business as usual. The federal government would earmark and spend the frozen funds as if it were already in their possession, simply adding the spending to the deficit/debt until the case is settled and the funds are released. The funds would then be retroactively applied to bring our debt down to where it should have been in the first place.
Whether it’s a lower court or the Supreme Court after all the appeals, the courts would eventually rule that states cannot withhold federal payments just because they disagree with federal policies that are affecting them. The only question that would exist would be how long would it take to get to this point, because there’s no way the Supreme Court would or even could rule any other way.
Upon receipt of the court order, some bank executive in a corporate office somewhere would access the accounts and release the funds to the federal government. That corporate office and the officer that ultimately releases the funds may or may not even physically be in the affected state, rendering it impossible for state officials to even try to prevent the bank from executing the court order and releasing the funds.
There would be no standoff. There would be no bloodshed. No civil war. It wouldn’t be done through shows of force, it would simply be a few clicks on the keyboard. It would be decided in courthouses and lawyers’ offices, not on the streets.
And notice how I didn’t mention Trump or California, because it would play out the same no matter who was President, or on the Supreme Court, or what state was withholding payment. And it should. Imagine if Alabama threatened to withhold federal payouts because desegregation was being forced upon them and they were against the Civil Rights act. That would never have been allowed to happen. If any state were ultimately allowed to just withhold funding that way, all it would do is lead to red states refusing to pay out whenever there’s a Democrat president, and blue states refusing to pay out when there’s a Republican in charge.
(And yes, there are just as many red states that pay out significantly more in federal funding than they receive. Democrats have California, New York, and MA for example. Republicans have states like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee.)
I feel like you’re missing a point here. It’s significant that this isn’t just
It’s that the federal government has made a commitment to provide funds to the state (e.g. the broadband construction funds, funds to build EV charging stations, etc.) and the federal government is now refusing to disburse those funds because the current administration has decided it doesn’t like paying the bills the previous administration incurred, at least to states Trump feels aren’t adequately supportive of his policies. The proposal in this case is to withhold delivery of funds the state is supposed to give the government in order to offset the funds the government is also contractually obligated to deliver.
I agree with you that this specific supreme court would definitely rule in favor of the feds, but I definitely don’t think the case is as absurdly one-sided as you seem to find it. I think a different court could probably find precedent for this kind of dispute if they were so inclined.
You’re getting to a level of technicalities and semantics that simply would not matter in the long run. The specific details and reasoning behind it is and would remain completely irrelevant. In the end, it would be a matter of California withholding federal payments because it does not agree with federal policies being enforced upon them. What those policies are and why is completely irrelevant.
No they wouldn’t, and it would be a disaster if they tried.
Again, what the policies are and why are irrelevant. It would be viewed by every other state as a license to withhold federal funds if you disagree with federal policy. Texas, for example, would be able to decide that they are going to withhold federal payments because they don’t like the restrictions on the 2nd amendment that the federal government is imposing upon them. If Dobbs were to be overturned, for example, Florida could say “the federal government has made a commitment to provide funds to the state to fund pro-life initiatives, and the federal government is now refusing to disburse those funds because the current administration has decided it doesn’t like paying the bills the previous administration incurred. The proposal in this case is to withhold delivery of funds the state is supposed to give the government in order to offset the funds the government is also contractually obligated to deliver.”
See how easy that is. If you can make the argument, so can they.
It would lead to no administration being able to apply nationwide policies without risking losing billions in federal payouts from states that disagree with those policies. It would make it impossible for the federal government to create and implement a budget as they’d have no idea how much they’d be able to collect, especially if a couple of large states were really upset over some recently passed legislation. States like Texas and California would have an outsized influence on federal policy because they could threaten to withhold federal dollars without negatively impacting their own economy, while smaller states like Maryland, Vermont, and Idaho would have no such leverage and in fact be forced to take whatever the federal government gives them and like it or risk losing federal funding and sending the state into bankruptcy.
Yeah, I think we just disagree about this. You’re implying that letting this go forward would be giving in to the state acting capriciously, but that’s really not what this is. The states have literally already started spending the money–hiring contractors and so forth to physically build things–based on the funds that the government had already decided to send them, but is now arbitrarily yanking back. Note that this is different from “we are accustomed to receiving funds for this”; instead it’s “you made a specific commitment to provide X funds for Y purpose, and are now suddenly stiffing us on the bill.” In that light, withholding a portion of the funds that the state ostensibly owes the government in order to make up that unexpected shortfall really isn’t that unreasonable. You keep portraying this as them withholding money “because they disagree with federal policies,” and saying “what those policies are and why is completely irrelevant,” but the policy they disagree with is the sudden and arbitrary withholding of previously-committed funds to the state, and they are withholding state funds to the feds as a direct way of offsetting that deficit. That makes it feel extremely relevant.
I just don’t think it absolutely has to be the slippery slope you’re portraying it as. I’m getting into technicalities because we’re discussing the law and precedent, and technicalities matter a whole freaking lot when you’re dealing with the law. There’s a reason descending into technicalities is referred to in roleplaying games as “rules lawyering”.
And as for highly populous states having a larger influence on federal policy…isn’t that just democracy? Power derives from the consent of the governed, and at the moment that consent is at a particularly low ebb.
In any case, yeah, I think we just disagree on this, and it’s all moot in the face of the specific court in power. I’ll let you get the last word if you want to reply, but I’ll probably drop it at this point.
It’s not saying the states are acting capriciously or even unreasonably, it’s just that the system would treat it as such
The system would declare the proper remediation is the states suing for their funds and having the justice system fix it. If the justice system so orders the dispersement and federal gov refuses to pay out, then I could imagine the settlement terms permitting the state to deduct owed funds from their payments. If the justice system fails to rule appropriately, then the state doesn’t have legal recourse, but it may still make sense to take their recourse anyway.
No, it would be blue states (not just California) setting aside in escrow money owed to the federal government, while pursuing a legal suit for the federal government to follow through on its commitments. This is a legit approach for an individual with a complaint against a business like a landlord, so it seems like you could pursue similar logic
The US government isn’t going to say “Drat, foiled again!” just because you used some clever semantics. Whether it’s in an escrow account or the normal state-controlled bank account is irrelevant. The end result would be the same. The government will order the account seized, the courts will very likely comply, and the government will get the money with the state being able to do fuck all to stop them.
How cute that you think the two are in any way comparable. State-level issues like this are on a completely different level than a dispute between you and your landlord.
I think this is a discussion about what the hypothetical ‘legal’ way for this to go down would be. It’s not really an assertion that it would actually work, but just a description of what the process would be.
This has deviated from “would such a move be justified?” to “how could such a move be legally pursued?”. It may still end in the same place, but we can’t pretend the courts would treat the “just stop paying without a judgement” as “legal”. Might proceed in an illegal fashion as the only reasonable way through though.
Then the solution is for the blue states to establish their own banking systems that the fed has no control or influence over. When a court tells the California bank to transfer money, they’ll just send that email to the trash folder.
The supreme court has discretion to elevate a case to themselves immediately if they so want to. Just like they have the discretion to refuse to hear a case at all. They just rarely exercise that discretion and mostly take cases that come to them on appeals.
So really the moment it becomes a lawsuit, the SCOTUS could elevate it to themselves (given the severity of the situation and the need for immediate resolution) and make a ruling without waiting for it to come to them on appeals.
I would assume that ruling would go exactly how you expect tho, certainly
We need to just ignore the Supreme Court entirely. They’re a fundamentally illegitimate institution. Their opinions are worth less than soiled toilet paper. Ignore them.