NORWICH, CT – US Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, told business and nonprofit leaders in eastern Connecticut on Friday that although the new Trump administration’s recent freeze order on federal spending appeared “chaotic,” the Constitution’s checks and balances were working.
Courtney gave a history lesson in what was fact and what was fiction, saying, “ There are the two pillars in terms of who has the authority to spend money.”
Courtney brought up a slide that said, “ Article one, section nine of the Constitution states very clearly that the power of the purse resides in the congressional branch.”
He added that there hadn’t been much court action or litigation around this law since 1974, when the Nixon administration tried to hold back infrastructure money from New York City in Train v. City of New York, which the court ruled unconstitutional.
The second point Courtney made was about Congress itself, saying that once Congress has voted into law a spending bill or an appropriations package, it is law.
“ The President’s duty under Article 2 is to, quote-unquote, ‘faithfully execute the laws of this country.’ That’s actually the oath of office that a president takes when they take on the presidency.”
Despite all of this, Courtney accepted that the Trump administration is clearly taking a new strategy this second term when it comes to executive orders.
“ If you go back four years ago to 2017, President Trump issued one executive order on day one and didn’t do another one for about a month or so,” Courtney said. “So obviously there’s a strategy here to flood the zone. And they have been doing a pretty good job of doing that.”
But Courtney also pointed out another difference in Trump’s second term in the reduced majority for Republicans in the House of Representatives compared to Trump’s first time in office.
He said the Republicans’ 219 majority will reduce to 217 in the near future with the resignations of Florida Republican Mike Waltz and New York Republican Elise Stefanik to take on new roles within the Trump Administration.
Courtney said with a chamber of 435 members, you can do the math.
“ This is a lot different than when Trump was elected in 2017, they had a majority of close to 240 when Paul Ryan was speaker.
Courtney said that Trump said he could basically tell some people to get lost on his side and he could still pass a tax bill.
“And that actually happened,” Courtney said. “There were a number of Republicans who voted ‘no’ because of the SALT cap that was put into the law. So, they’re at a place right now where they can’t give away any votes.”
Courtney said one of Trump’s great achievements during his first presidency was passage of the USMCA Trade Agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada, which updated the NAFTA agreement.
“ I voted for it,” Courtney said. “I didn’t vote for probably any other trade agreements in the time I’ve been in Congress. But it was well done. They finally put into place enforcement mechanisms for labor standards, environmental standards, which was always the big complaint on the Democratic side.”
But, he added, with new 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada about to take effect this weekend, this year it’s a different story.
“It’s sort of bizarre to see that we’re talking about putting tariffs of 25 percent on two countries that we have a trade agreement with that we really just negotiated.” Courtney said.
He said the US nuclear energy industry will suffer as a result of the tariffs because the US imports all of its uranium for nuclear power stations from Canada.
“ We have a couple of uranium mines still open in this country, but basically (Canada) that’s really the real source of uranium for the US,” Courtney said. “And why at a time when energy costs are so important … Why are you going to add costs to really the one sector of energy production that actually is now starting to get some real political support?”
Courtney ended his talk by saying the federal budget still has to be agreed upon, and therefore a government shutdown could still occur. In the last Congress, Courtney said, Democrats had to step in to avoid a default in May 2023.
”Democrats stepped forward to keep the lights on and keep the government moving,” Courtney said. “The fact is that if you just do the numbers and do the math at some point they’re going to have to come to our side and then, you know, we’re not going to be a cheap date.”
