Trump's bid to fund his wall with money not appropriated by Congress has set me thinking about the Obama administration's far better grounded, but still dubious, determination to fund the ACA's Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies without an explicit appropriation from Congress.
That decision was challenged in court by the Republican Congress in 2014 and, with the suit still pending, countermanded by Trump in October 2017, with disruptive but far from catastrophic consequences.
I'm thinking not of tendentious comparisons between Obama's executive actions and Trump's, but rather about a counterfactual: What if the Obama administration had taken the likely Congressional refusal to appropriate funds at face value, and declined to directly fund CSR?
That decision was challenged in court by the Republican Congress in 2014 and, with the suit still pending, countermanded by Trump in October 2017, with disruptive but far from catastrophic consequences.
I'm thinking not of tendentious comparisons between Obama's executive actions and Trump's, but rather about a counterfactual: What if the Obama administration had taken the likely Congressional refusal to appropriate funds at face value, and declined to directly fund CSR?
