> The hyperbole is a bit much for me. It shouldn't amaze me, but here we are. Partisans are able to construe spending cuts and shrinking the purview of the state, with authoritarianism.
There is plenty of precedent for both spending cuts and shrinking (in some areas, usually while expanding others) government from US Presidents. Simply refusing to spend appropriated funds as directed by law where even the excuse given isn't either of those but imposing ideological constraints not contained or authorized at the discretion of the executive in the governing law is, on the other hand, not. Openly ideological and patronage oriented purges of the federal workforce (at least, since the adoption of civil service laws expressly to to stop that) again is not, and is neither about shrinking the scope of government or cutting spending.
>Simply refusing to spend appropriated funds as directed by law...
Again, this is how the issue is being played in a partisan fashion. Yet, when we dig deeper, beneath the soundbite interpretations, we find that legal scholars and Supreme Court justices have complex and conflicted views on how much authority The President has over government bureaus.
>...the President’s authority over independent agencies depends not on the Constitution but on a common statutory phrase, which allows the President to discharge the heads of such agencies for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” This phrase—the INM standard—is best understood to create a relationship of residential review—and a particular remedy for legal delinquency flowing from that review. It allows the President to discharge members of independent agencies not only for laziness and torpor (inefficiency) or for corruption (malfeasance) but also for neglect of their legal duties, which includes egregiously erroneous decisions of policy, law, or fact, either repeatedly or on unusually important matters...
The cited sources illustrate how complex the law is. If we accept the authority of the state, then it is up to the Supreme Court to rule on the specifics. If the ruling is in favor of Trump's actions, we can again reasonably expect the partisans to paint this as an out-of-control judiciary. From that point we may see more arguments for "packing the court", the entire narrative around "authoritarianism" again becomes an exercise in partisan hypocrisy.
The point about cutting budgets, agencies and reducing the purview of the state remains. It is in direct contrast to authoritarian ideology, which without exception seeks to expand the purview of the state. Many quips have been leveled here, but no one has approached this point.
Georgetown Law and Cass Sunstein laying out the different views and complexity of the issue, or a partisan youtuber offering, "Trump Broke the Government AND THEN CHANGED HIS MIND (And Then Changed His Mind AGAIN)"
There is plenty of precedent for both spending cuts and shrinking (in some areas, usually while expanding others) government from US Presidents. Simply refusing to spend appropriated funds as directed by law where even the excuse given isn't either of those but imposing ideological constraints not contained or authorized at the discretion of the executive in the governing law is, on the other hand, not. Openly ideological and patronage oriented purges of the federal workforce (at least, since the adoption of civil service laws expressly to to stop that) again is not, and is neither about shrinking the scope of government or cutting spending.