There’s an idea about how political power is supposed to work in the U.S. To guard against anything resembling monarchy, the founders vested Congress, not the president, with the power of the purse. The premise was simple: Kings tax and spend at will. American presidents aren’t supposed to. Of course, it’s well known that this boundary is being stress-tested by President Donald Trump. What isn’t is that it’s related to his solution to the crisis at airports, with TSA agents going unpaid owing to the partial government shutdown related to Trump’s controversial immigration regime.
Trump signed an executive order last week to pay TSA agents. The order directs the Secretary of Homeland Security “to use funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations to provide TSA employees with the compensation and benefits that would have accrued to them if not for the Democrat-led DHS shutdown.”
