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Essentials for a Continuing Resolution [1]

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Date: 2025-03-07

Trump has asserted unconstitutional total power over the federal government. The traditional guardrails have not held, and the challenge is to contest that coup effectively on multiple fronts.

What is the point of Congress passing a budget if the only part of it Trump will obey is (maybe) the limit on how much he can spend? Focusing on this question is the point of maximum leverage within Congress, and with the Administration. It should be the pivot and focus of Democratic unity in Congress.

Given the Musk maladministration’s near total regard for the budget Congress has embodied in federal law, effective leverage is using that process to force Congressional republicans and the administration into making very public choices that highlight their currently unconstitutional course. This is likely to be a protracted struggle, so it is also vital not to exhaust leverage, but to maintain it.

I think there are only two mutually compatible options for seriously leveraging the Continuing Resolution to restore the constitutional role of Congress in the federal budget :

Limiting any Continuing Resolution to 30 days

Defunding progressively larger portions of the executive branch

The most important is time limitation, as an extended CR only allows more time to normalize the current illegality. Given a 30-day limit, defunding of executive branch functions can be progressively applied across subsequent CRs.

Any CR must contains clear statements of Congressional intent that:

- All funds are to be expended for the programs as they existed at the last time a full budget was passed, including funding for bodies established by Congress as totally or partially independent of executive control.

- Notwithstanding other federal law, none of these funds nor other funds available to the executive branch may be used to dismantle or thwart congressionally authorized programs and expenditures,

At this stage, an initial attack on Executive anti-constitutional excess could be as brief as:

- Notwithstanding other federal law, none of these fund nor other funds available to the executive branch may be used to establish or maintain positions with executive power above the level of deputy assistant secretary of Cabinet agencies or the equivalent for organizations which are not part of a Cabinet agency, unless those positions existed at such a level at the time the last full budget was passed .

This may be our only chance to restore constitutional order before the slide into civil conflict becomes inevitable. Since they cannot pass a budget without Democratic support, Republicans would have to vote for this and Trump would have to not veto it in order to avoid a government shutdown – one which they couldn’t blame on the Democrats.

The threat to make them responsible for a government shutdown is the only real leverage Democrats have – USE IT.

Use it to force them to take votes demonstrating their defection from the constitution and from principles they only recently abandoned.

Make it clear that Democrats are prepared to have nothing but 30-day CR’s for as long as it takes to restore constitutional order. Take advantage of the great unpopularity of Musk/Doge to set a precedent for defunding parts of the executive branch budget.

And if republicans sign off on it but then break it, raise the ante – require more limits on executive mis-rule in the next 30 days. Make them demonstrate that they have no integrity and no respect for Congress, only greed for power.

There are lots of other issues I’d like to see leveraged to force at least floor votes on.

But their significance in moving the struggle to enforce the constitution to a favorable public battlefield pales in comparison to the effect of repeated Continuing Resolutions and attacks on the budgets and authorizations of executive functions where unconstitutional activities are occurring.

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