Trump is ignoring the law to keep the shutdown from causing him political pain

In past shutdowns, more of the government ceased operating.

By Sam Berger
Sam Berger is a senior adviser at the Center for American Progress. He previously worked as a lawyer at the White House Office of Management and Budget during the 2013 shutdown.
January 15

Tens of thousands of previously furloughed federal employees returned to work this week — without pay — so the government could process tax refunds, oversee airplane safety, and inspect food and drugs. It was the Trump administration’s latest set of major changes to how agencies without funding operate, moves that it claims are simply an effort to make things “as painless as possible.”

But as someone who helped manage the government-wide response to the 2013 shutdown, I can tell you: President Trump’s White House is selling the American people a bill of goods.

It’s natural to want to reduce the harm from a shutdown. But that’s not really Trump’s goal. If it were, he would not be threatening to continue this one for months or years . Instead, he is changing precedents in a one-off manner to paper over problems and help favored constituencies, all to create political space to prolong the standoff. Trump is not concerned about making the shutdown painless for the American people — he’s concerned with making it painless for himself.

Since the Constitution says the government can spend only money that has been appropriated by Congress, there’s only so much that can legally be done during a shutdown to mitigate harm. The government provides a wide range of important services, and when it has no funding, most of those services must stop, and the people who provide them cannot get their paychecks. The law limits what activities can continue during a shutdown: those necessary to protect life or property, to carry out the president’s core constitutional responsibilities, and to operate programs that Congress has said should continue in the absence of funding.

But Trump has shunted aside legal and programmatic considerations in favor of two imperatives: keeping bad press to a minimum and keeping influential supporters happy.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/15/trump-is-ignoring-law-keep-shutdown-causing-him-political-pain/