[codexb]

At some level, someone needs to have discretion on which grants to award and not award. You can call it "dictatorial", but I don't see how it's any less dictatorial if the decision-maker is some faceless, unaccountable bureaucrat vs a President that is accountable to voters. Surely, grants were being denied before for other reasons.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>Surely, grants were being denied before for other reasons.

Were they being denied? It might well be the case that grants were never denied except when the grant spigot ran dry waiting for the next year. I don't necessarily believe that is the case, but is there some evidence that it doesn't work like that?

[DrillShopper]

> At some level, someone needs to have discretion on which grants to award and not award

Then that person should not be a politician or political appointee who judges on the merits and not on the votes it will bring.

[prasadjoglekar]

If the funds are disbursed from the public Treasury, it is very much a political decision. You can put some intermediary bureaucrats to create a face of objectivity, but it's a political decision at it's core.

[codexb]

Ah, the so-called benevolent dictator. The magical philosopher king to deliver us all from tyranny.

[wahern]

Process matters, everything else is to a first approximation merely platitudes. What's the difference between faceless bureaucrats making these decisions vs the president? It's the difference between rule of law vs dictatorship. Faceless bureaucrats have to follow policy defined by Congress and the President. If the person making the policy is the same person making the decision, and especially when the "policy" is whatever their fancy is, that's not rule of law. America was founded on the principle, "a government of law, not of men".

Moreover, faceless bureaucrats risk criminal and financial punishments for things like self-dealing. The president faces no such risk. And when they're a lame duck, they (theoretically) face zero risk, period.

Bureaucracies are slow. They're costly. Like democracy generally, they're inefficient. They're worthwhile because, at least as far as government is concerned, they're a necessary element to maintain rule of law and avoiding dictatorship. The solution to government bureaucracy isn't to remove the bureaucracy, it's to remove the government involvement. Otherwise, you're just inviting dictatorship. This has happened countless times. When the people get upset about perceived government ineffectiveness and its democratic institutions are too slow to respond (e.g. gridlocked Congress), there are two routes: privatization (i.e. reducing the role of government, not merely something like syndicalism) or dictatorship.

What's the difference between Donald Trump's rise to power and approach to governance, versus Huge Chavez's? Not much. The parallels are amazing. Both came to power promising radical overhauls of perceived sclerotic institutions, including broken legislatures. Like Trump, Chavez was a media whore who spent most of his time talking on television, making impossible promises and blaming everyone and everything else for his own failures. (Castro was like this, too.) They both spout so much B.S. that most people can't even keep up; they just start taking them at their word, which is why Chavez was popular until the day he died. His successor has zero charisma; the policies haven't changed, but now people hate the exact same kind of government they had during Chavez, but have no power to change it. That's what happens when you choose government of men rather than government of law.

[lesuorac]

Do you honestly think Trump is individually reviewing grants?

Trump with help of various groups makes political appointees who either individually oversee grant reviews or administrate individuals that do. These people are just as faceless and unaccountable as with any other president ...

The difference here is that Congress who is much more accountable to voters deliberated and wrote laws authorizing various funding which is being completely overridden by the branch of government that is supposed to carry out the law.

[freejazz]

It is dictatorial, not because one person gets to make the decision, but because the US constitution delineates the powers of the gov't, to which the President does not have this power. I really do not understand why this is such a hard concept for many people here to grasp. The separation of powers is such a fundamental aspect of our government that I am astounded to see you miss this point. When any one branch usurps the power of another branch it is the *EXACT* kind of tyranny the constitution was created to avoid.

[codexb]

What was happening before this year? Surely, congress was not the one approving and awarding these grants. It was a member of the executive agency. Trump didn't declare any power that wasn't already being exercised by the executive.