Legal basis for &quot;discretionary spending&quot; vs. &quot;mandatory spending&quot; in the USA 1. &quot;Discretionary&quot; and &quot;mandatory&quot; dollars My general understanding of the federal budget process in the USA is that: discretionary spending must be &quot;appropriated&quot; by the House of Representatives every year, following ideas from Article I Sections 7 or 9 or something. mandatory spending is not subject to this requirement. 2. This Congress can't bind a future Congress (?) However, my layman's understanding of Congress's power also includes the notion that &quot;this Congress can't bind a future Congress&quot;. Googling around has provided many instances of politicians and even law professors invoking this notion, but no authoritative source. Some (perhaps only weak) form of this principle must be true; otherwise this Congress could say &quot;no new laws can be passed after 2030 except by a 4/5s majority in Congress&quot; or whatever, effectively stripping future Congresses of all of their power. 3. So, &quot;mandatory&quot; for whom? Thus I think my question is, for whom is the spending &quot;mandatory&quot;? Future Congresses? Could they just do a simple majority vote (assuming the President signs it) to alter &quot;mandatory&quot; spending? If so, is it really &quot;mandatory&quot;? And how would it then substantively differ from &quot;discretionary&quot; spending? Is &quot;mandatory&quot; really just an escape clause from requiring Appropriations by the House of Representatives?
&quot;Mandatory&quot; spending means spending that takes place without passage of a new appropriation bill, but it may still be modified by Congress. The only truly mandatory spending categories that cannot be modified by future Congresses are interest on the national debt and certain multiple year contractual obligations (e.g. for naval ship building contracts). &quot;Discretionary&quot; spending means spending that has to be appropriated each budget cycle. Without affirmative legislation, each budget cycle, it doesn't happen. The distinction is important because the U.S. federal legislative process is frequently gridlocked with divided control with the President's political party (which has veto power), or with a division of partisan control between the two houses of Congress, each of which have veto power over the legislative process. It takes the approval of both houses of Congress and the President to pass legislation except in the case of a rare veto override or a Senate and President approved treaty, which requires a two-thirds majority, and appropriations bills have to start in the U.S. House. If all three are not controlled by the same party, getting legislation passes as is necessary for discretionary spending, is challenging. So the status quo default of mandatory spending is hard to modify.
From the holdings of May 14, 2018 in NJ. v. NCAA, As the Tenth Amendment confirms, all legislative power not conferred on Congress by the Constitution is reserved for the States. Absent from the list of conferred powers is the power to issue direct orders to the governments of the States. The federal law in question forbids legislatures from passing certain laws, but PASPA’s anti-authorization provision unequivocally dictates what a state legislature may and may not do. The distinction between compelling a State to enact legislation and prohibiting a State from enacting new laws is an empty one. The basic principle—that Congress cannot issue direct orders to state legislatures—applies in either event. The anti-authorization provision does not constitute a valid preemption provision. To preempt state law, it must satisfy two requirements. It must represent the exercise of a power conferred on Congress by the Constitution. And, since the Constitution “confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States,” New York, supra, at 177, it must be best read as one that regulates private actors. There is no way that the PASPA anti-authorization provision can be understood as a regulation of private actors. It does not confer any federal rights on private actors interested in conducting sports gambling operations or impose any federal restrictions on private actors. The Commerce Clause does not enter into the majority opinion, though in Thomas' concurring opinion, he indicates he is not entirely happy with purely in-state applications of the Commerce Clause. But, at present, interstate gambling does not differ.
You are mostly mistaken. Prior to the enactment of the STOCK Act in 2012 (as amended in 2013), insider trading by members of Congress based upon information obtained in their official duties was legal. This is no longer the case, but there is no private cause of action to enforce the STOCK Act. Instead, the principal means by which violations are enforced is via a federal criminal prosecution which is something that the Justice Department is very reluctant to direct at a member of Congress. There are at least two barriers to such prosecutions, in addition to the political issues involved with having an agency prosecute members of the body that funds it and regulates it: To bring a case here, however, federal authorities must overcome two obstacles: the Speech and Debate Clause, and proving “materiality” in novel circumstances. Indeed, the announcement that the authorities have closed their investigations into three senators may show these obstacles already have proven too steep. As a result, it is hard to bring federal criminal cases against members of Congress (or their aides) to enforce the STOCK Act, so it is much more toothless than it seems on the surface. The further fact that a security is structured as an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), however, is not itself necessarily all that much of a barrier to insider trading criminal liability for members of Congress, beyond the barriers already noted. This is because many ETFs are focused on something less than the total securities market. If a member of Congress, for example, has inside information on something that will impact the entire manufacturing industry, that member of Congress can engaged in insider trading in an ETF pertinent to that industry. Similarly, if a member of Congress gains advanced insight about an imminent war in Latin America, the member of Congress could engage in insider trading in connection with a Latin American securities ETF. There is no requirement that insider trading be restricted to, or focused upon, a single issuer of securities (i.e. it does not have to be limited to stocks or bonds in a single corporation).
The U.S. Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to set everyday procedural rules in state court, although it can mandate processes that flow from the constitution. In criminal cases, this allows it to regulate courtroom conduct that is prejudicial to defendants. The U.S. Supreme Court, for example, has prohibited keeping criminal defendants facing trial in a cage in the courtroom as is common in many jurisdictions elsewhere in the world. The Rittenhouse case took place in state court, over which the U.S. Supreme Court has limited authority in such matters. On the other hand, the U.S. Supreme Court has broad authority to establish court rules in the federal courts and could adopt rules in those courts if it deemed fit, and if its proposed rules were not legislatively vetoed by Congress.
No, it is not debt and you are not owed any money beyond what Congress decides to give you. Section 1104 of the act says the benefits are what Congress decides to give out. This was challenged in 1960 and upheld. To quote Wikipedia: Ephram Nestor challenged Section 1104 after he was denied Social Security payments as a deported member of the Communist Party. He argued that a contract existed between himself and the United States government, since he had paid into the system for 19 years. ... The Court ruled that no such contract exists, and that there is no contractual right to receive Social Security payments. Payments due under Social Security are not “property” rights and are not protected by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The interest of a beneficiary of Social Security is protected only by the Due Process Clause.
Congress cannot be sued for enacting a law. Period. The courts do not have the power to punish Congress for passing a law, they cannot forbid Congress from passing a law, they have no say over what the wording of a law can be. Only Congress has the power to determine what laws they pass. The courts do, of course, have the power to interpret and even strike down a law that they deem to be unconstitutional. This is the essence of constitutional separation of powers.
Probably.* Congress has wide latitude to dictate the procedures of "inferior courts" -- the district courts and circuit courts of appeal. Those courts only exist because Congress created them, so Congress can generally set the terms on which they continue to exist. That power is limited in several important ways by the Constitution, including the terms and compensation of the judges, and standing to address cases, and then further limited by separation-of-powers principles. But the Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of Criminal Procedure are a good example of how Congress has already -- and largely unobjectionably -- imposed these types of demands on the judiciary. The rules are generally drafted by the judicial branch, but Congress approves them and gives them the force of law. In both sets of rules, you can already see some requirements on how decisions are worded: Criminal Rule 23 requires the court to "state its specific findings of fact" after a bench trial; Criminal Rule 32 requires the court to "set forth the plea, the jury verdict or the court's findings, the adjudication, and the sentence" in judgments of conviction; Civil Rule 52 requires the court to "find the facts specially and state its conclusions of law separately"; Civil Rule 58 requires that "every judgment and amended judgment ... be set out in a separate document"; Civil Rule 59 requires the court to "specify the reasons [for granting or denying a motion for a new trial] in its order"; and Civil Rule 72 requires magistrates to enter "a recommended disposition, including, if appropriate, proposed findings of fact." The rule you're proposing seems to go well beyond these requirements, but I don't see how it would run afoul of constitutional constraints. I could imagine an argument that this somehow encroaches on the courts' inherent authority, but I'm not really convinced that that authority protects against this. For more information, you can read the Congressional Research Service report on "Congressional Authority Over the Federal Courts." *This answer only applies to Article III courts, but even then does not apply to the Supreme Court, which is co-equal and generally has the authority to set its own rules. When it comes to Article I courts, though, Congress would probably have virtually unlimited discretion to impose the kinds of requirements that you're talking about, and even to say that the court has no jurisdiction to consider constitutionality at all. Congress might even get away with imposing these kinds of requirements on state courts through the Spending Clause
It is common place for major official actions, not just checks but also, for example, governmental buildings, to note the politicians who implemented law or enacted them at the time. This practice is not forbidden by any law or election-related regulation. There is a strong political norm as a matter of political etiquette that checks from the government be signed by a senior official in the Treasury department or a state and local equivalent, such as the Secretary of Treasury, the Comptroller of the Currency, or the Director of the Internal Revenue Service, rather than the President, Governor, or Mayor. But no one would have legal standing to challenge a violation of this political norm in court, because a person receiving a check naming the President as the signer has not suffered an actual injury.