Dem
51
GOP
49
On Monday, we had an item about the Supreme Court's new term, which began this week. On Tuesday, the Court heard a case that could have upended many federal agencies. A group of payday lenders was trying to get the Court to declare the funding method Congress specified for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be unconstitutional. While you can't draw firm conclusions from the oral hearings, even Justice Clarence Thomas was skeptical about the payday lenders' case. When conservatives have lost Thomas, they are not in good shape.
The DoJ argued that ruling for the payday lenders would upset decades of precedent where Congress has decided to fund federal agencies by some mechanism other than an annual appropriation, often specifically to have them not be subject to politics. Surely if Congress wants to insulate some agency from which party currently has control of Congress, it has the power to do that? To suddenly say that every agency has to be specifically in the budget every year would have sweeping consequences for the country. About half of the government is funded by mechanisms other than a direct annual appropriation. For example, Social Security gets its money from the FICA tax; it doesn't get an annual appropriation from Congress. If that is required, Social Security would be in dire straits. The same is true for Medicare and many other programs.
Several justices asked the lawyers for the payday lenders exactly how the funding mechanism violates the Constitution. After all, the funding mechanism was created by a specific act of Congress. In the case about the New York state gun laws, all of a sudden, how old a law is became critical. But funding by a means other than an annual appropriation has been around for 250 years. The Customs Service has always gotten money from tariffs that Congress levied, going back to the founding of the Republic.
The case is very hot. All 50 state attorneys general have filed amicus briefs. The 23 Democratic AGs support the DoJ. The 27 Republican AGs support the payday lenders. (V)