You can make a strong argument these institutions require reform, but such reform should be done not overnight, and not through such broad strokes.
The kind of reform you are talking about does not work against quasi-government organizations with the GDP of small countries.
It'll be held up in courts for 50 years, and even then it'll be a game of whack a mole.
There's a reason things got so bad.
If you can't be arsed to change the law, you have to follow it.
This is generally how civilized people are expected to behave, and a 49.8% mandate does not give you license to do away with the rule of law.
Universities have freedom in how to use grant money. The government had so far not bothered with controlling what they do with the money coming from the government. The situation is a bit like you donating to a charity and they spending it on executive bonuses.
Are you proposing that the government has to sign everything into law before taking any action? Can you think of why that might be a terrible idea?
I am not writing in support of funding cuts.
I am strongly supportive of stopping universities from skimming most of the funding, and the research getting a tiny bit. Student researchers doing the actual work get less than minimum wage.
If you are surprised by the 'less than minimum wage' part, it's a bit of creative accounting by universities counting a 'tuition waiver' as part of your wages.
Since Congress passed The Constitution's Appropriations Clause and the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (ICA) in 1974.
Because otherwise, the executive could just unilaterally shut down any part of the government at any time. Or siphon money from one department to another.
Which it can't by design, since congress controls the purse.
There's a process outlined in that act, under which the executive can report to Congress that it is reducing spending, and Congress must approve that reduction in order for it to take effect. That is the law of the land. The law is being broken.
If you don't like the budget, there is one governing body that can do something about it in this country. The legislature. They control spending, just like putting people in prison is controlled by the judiciary.
Strangely, all the people grousing about executive overreaches are dead silent on all this.
The sin has never been executive overreach, the sin was always an executive they did not control.
There’s a process to handle scenarios, where the administrative branch feels that more money is not needed to be spent for the purposes that the money was initially allocated for. At the very least, there is a 45 day process starting from the point that it is determined to be a “deferral of the budget process” (continuous days that Congress is in session) that is allowed for Congress to pass a rescission bill. I don’t believe Trump’s been in office long enough for that process to even have taken place.
1) we’re talking about discretionary grants being made out of taxpayer dollars;
2) congress has delegated authority to make the grants and to the executive, including determining indirects; and
3) the executive action is being used to save money.
It’s also “the rule of law” in some sense when NIMBYs sue to keep a Ronald Mcdonald House from being built in their posh neighborhood, but that doesn’t mean we need to lionize it on that basis, or preemptively surrender to efforts to invoke the law to block reform. The universities can afford expensive lawyers with their 59% indirects, let those lawyers worry about it.
Anyone complaining about slow courts should probably focus on the courts themselves, or the money coming in. Not the act of laws.
Most of the critics of the doge are arguing that the changes are too fast and that the system needs to gradually and systematically through a series of conferences and meetings come to a proposal that might be implemented sometime in the future.