The Executive Orders are Misdirection

The executive orders signed by President Donald Trump are taking money away from Social Security. This is what suspending the payroll tax is about. This is disaster capitalism, using a disaster to enact long-held policy goals by the far right. This is not recent, for some conservatives the Social Security system has been a problem since it was enacted during the New Deal in the 1930s. It’s always been considered the third rail in American politics but the Pandemic is providing an opportunity. The president also declared that he will eliminate the system if he is elected for a second term. What they are is a way for the president to pretend he is doing something. They should partly to put pressure on Congress but are re an electoral gambit. Trump is trying to signal that he is doing something, while Congress is failing to act.

This ignores the bills that Democrats have already passed, which include funds for the cash-strapped states, school systems, the postal service, hospitals, frontline workers, and others. Senate Republicans refuse to even look at this bill and negotiations collapsed.

The president is going around the authority enumerated in the Constitution for the House and they are using the Stafford Act to try to fund this. , The House has the power of the purse, not the executive. What the president is doing is classic politics of an…