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citilife | 3 years ago

How does the government... ban something... in a budget bill?

discuss

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boomboomsubban|3 years ago

The US congress is so broken that it seems like a majority of laws are railroaded into bills that absolutely need to pass rather than seperate bills themselves.

Both parties say "we'll pass this spending bill if you let x, y, and z completely unrelated bills be attached to it." Then both sides can say "we got this bill you wanted passed" and "I didn't want to vote for X but I had to support the budget bill."

It's a ridiculous system.

defrost|3 years ago

Tangentially related, the Helms Amendment is but one example of leveraging the dispersal of funds.

I've not looked into the specifics here but it wouldn't be out of place to tie aspects of budget funding to the existence of a questionable security risk being present in a government assisted environment.

teeray|3 years ago

If you throw the lever, the trolley won’t run over the livelihoods of thousands of federal employees, but all kinds of sneaky unfavorable things may happen.

jasonlotito|3 years ago

On government devices. These are their devices. I’m surprised it was allowed.

quasarj|3 years ago

Well, it probably just wasn't explicitly banned. Though like you say, I wonder why they don't have a whitelist instead?