Astonishing order today from District Court Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island, ordering the Trump administration to make full November SNAP payments to all recipients by tomorrow. The order is an interesting measure of where we are. You can read the whole thing yourself by clicking to open this PDF file:
The order begins with the premise that the government feeds its people, so the people will immediately starve if government doesn’t give them food. The responsibility of government is to nourish us, so nourish us it must. Page one:
“…their decision not to feed hungry Americans.” When an American is hungry, the government must give food to him, or else he stays hungry. No alternatives exist. Who ensures that children are properly nourished? The United States Department of Agriculture, full stop. Strangely, my own child still asks me to cook dinner for her. Clearly she does not understand our brave new world. Please direct all further inquiries to the Secretary of Agriculture.
Second, given the fact that Congress has not funded current operations of SNAP and other government programs, the court first directed the administration to use SNAP contingency funding appropriated earlier by Congress to cover emergencies like wars and natural disasters. But when the administration warned the court that the available contingency funding would only cover partial benefits for the month of November, the court ordered the administration to disregard congressional appropriations and just find money from other funds that it could use. On pg. 7, the court tells the executive branch which piles of money it should consider using, granting the judiciary the power of the purse:
Ordering the administration to use SNAP contingency money to pay for SNAP, the court was arguably still wandering near the boundaries of the division of power. But now the court is pointing at other funds and directing the president to raid them, even if that’s not what Congress said those funds were for. You can read about Section 32 here — it’s USDA funding for farm support programs, which a judge now says are actually for SNAP, on the power of his word. He has re-appropriated it. He has the power of the purse.
The administration didn’t appeal the judge’s initial order to at least partially fund SNAP in November with SNAP contingency funds, but the DOJ filed an immediate notice of appeal following this order. You can see why. He’s just wandering through the Treasury now, announcing which funds he feels like using. “Mmm, this is a pretty little morsel, IT WANTS THE PRECIOUS.”
Then, on pg. 8, the judge says that the administration has claimed that it’s hard to just suddenly alter payment formulas on the fly for 42 million people in order to make partial payments of benefits…
…which the court handwaves away on pg. 14:
The judge is simply not inclined to take notice of these so-called system changes and this so-called procedural complexity. He has directed that the people be fed, so the people shall be fed. I am not inclined to excuse your noncompliance with my order to dissolve gravity — don’t you understand what I mean when I say I ordered you to do this?
And so on. It appears that a black robe makes you omnipotent, omniscient, and generally magical. Judge Ozymandias has spoken! And his words shall echo as the very thunder, and all shall tremble! Let that be built which my voice has declared to arise!
We’ll see how it goes for him.
I feel like the paragraph waving away all the systems complexity and ordering USDA to just get it done right away because I say so is going to be tacked to the wall of every IT department in the country as an example of managerial thinking, like a Dilbert cartoon.
Why doesn’t the federal judge just reverse hunger, poverty, and illness while he’s at it?