Good Tuesday morning.
Poking around the interwebs in search of today’s post fodder I came across an historical fact that I found rather ironic. On this day in 1778 the Continental Congress passed the first U.S. federal budget.
At the time, the newly formed union had run up a lot of debt while fighting for its independence from Great Britain. The Articles of Confederation, which was the first document to establish how the nascent national government would function, did not include the power to impose taxes on the states.
People were understandably a little leery of the whole taxation thing, which, as I’m sure you’ll remember if you stretch your brain back to elementary school history classes, was what spurred the colonies to break with the monarchy in the first place. That’s why the first iteration of a central government for the fledgling nation was decentralized and weak.
But taxation without representation, as the saying went, is one thing. The colonies balked at being the piggy bank for the king via imposition of the Townsend Act and the Tea Act, for example, without having a say in the matter. A representative government, as envisioned by the founding fathers, would be government for the people and by the people (at least conceptually).
Being unable to enforce taxes on the states left the federal government in a bind and unable to effectively regulate the economy. So, at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, delegates voted to give Congress the power to levy taxes.
The U.S. Treasury Department was subsequently created to establish a permanent institution to to manage government finances, and its inaugural secretary was none other than Alexander Hamilton.
I’m going to stop here with the history refresher in the interest of time – though certainly quite a bit has happened since Hamilton’s day – not the least of which is a federal deficit in the trillions of dollars – (actually, more than $33 trillion for the first time ever, if you want to get technical about it), and get to the irony portion of this post.
I find it both disheartening and also weirdly fitting that on the anniversary of the first-ever federal budget deal, the country is yet again teetering on the edge of a government shutdown because members of Congress are unable to reach…say it with me…a budget deal.
To be clear, I am not getting all nostalgic for a simpler time when Congress actually managed to work together to hammer out deals. There was plenty of political infighting to go around during the post-Revolutionary period – or so I’ve read. But the increasingly nasty intra-party warfare taking place right now in the GOP as the Oct. 1 shutdown deadline needs is really something.
Words actually fail me.
Shutdowns are certainly disruptive – especially for those federal employees who don’t get paid while our elected officials try to hash out their differences. But we’ve lived through them before. It’s less about the mechanics of the thing than the optics; shutting down a government is just not a good look.
Of course, by D.C. standards, the almost two weeks between now and Oct. 1 is a veritable eternity. Maybe they’ll get a deal after all.
We’ll have partly cloudy skies today with the chance of a rain shower. Temperatures will be in the low 70s.
In the headlines…
Five Americans freed from Iranian detention yesterday are on their way back to the United States after initially stopping in Doha, Qatar, according to a US official and a source familiar with the matter.
President Joe Biden’s deal with Iran that unlocked $6 billion in Tehran’s frozen funds to bring the five imprisoned Americans home is creating the kind of terrible optics and an opening for his domestic foes that a politically weakened president can ill afford.
The release came as world leaders gathered in New York this week for the annual high-level meetings of the United Nations General Assembly. Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, will be in attendance, as will Biden.
A second summit between Biden and Pacific Island nations is slated to take place next week in Washington, underscoring the outsize influence wielded by the small but geopolitically vital countries of Oceania.
Major stage and musical performers showed support for Biden’s reelection campaign yesterday, with a Broadway for Biden fundraiser in which the president quipped about his age but also put the campaign in stark terms.
Hunter Biden sued the Internal Revenue Service, claiming that two agents publicly alleging tax-probe interference wrongly shared his personal information, a case that comes amid escalating legal and political struggles as the 2024 election looms.
In the suit, Hunter Biden’s lawyers allege that “IRS agents have targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden via public statements to the media in which they and their representatives disclosed confidential information about a private citizen’s tax matters.”
Republican leaders were hoping to pass the combination of spending cuts and border controls to show they were working to forestall a shutdown and pressure the Senate, but the bill’s prospects looked grim.
McCarthy said that he is not ready to abandon the short-term government funding deal negotiated by members of the House Freedom Caucus and Main Street Caucus, despite warnings from multiple conservative members that they will oppose the deal.
As the autoworkers strike enters Day 4, the two sides are digging in.
The most recent contract proposal by automaker Stellantis to the United Auto Workers union could lead to the closure of 18 U.S. facilities, but it could also bring new investments and repurpose an idled vehicle assembly plant in Illinois.
Former President Trump will skip the second Republican presidential primary debate in California next week and instead will travel to Detroit to deliver a speech in front of current and former union members, according to a source familiar with his plans.
The debate on Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California will be the second snubbed by Trump this election cycle in favor of a competing event.
Rudy Giuliani, already under criminal indictment and at risk of losing his law license for his effort to keep Trump in office after the 2020 election, is now being sued by his own lawyer.
The New York Legislature passed hundreds of bills before breaking in June. Many high–profile ones like Clean Slate and a bill to create a reparations task force have yet to be signed.
Hochul signed legislation that aims to to protect access to not-for-profit car sharing services like Ithaca Carshare. The law allows risk retention groups registered in New York State to offer automobile insurance coverage from out of state.
School districts are asking Hochul not to sign legislation that would give tenure-like protections to non-instructional employees, such as custodians and administrative assistants, making it more difficult and costly to discipline or fire them.
In California, getting labor on board was essential to addressing the housing crisis. In New York, unions say the governor has barely tried.
The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council held a meeting with a member of Hochul’s administration as the Tribe continues efforts to foster better relationships with external governments and agencies.
Hochul spoke out about what she called right-wing attacks on transgender children.
The state Thruway Authority’s board of directors voted to pass two 5% toll increases, one in January and again in January 2027.
Hochul has recommended Frank Hoare to serve as the Thruway Authority’s executive director. The authority’s board of directors appointed him acting executive director, a slight change to his title — he was named interim executive director in December.
An emotional Mayor Eric Adams denounced the suspects accused of the alleged opioid exposure in a Bronx day care last week, which left one toddler dead and sent three others to the hospital, and called for a “national assault” on the epidemic.
The Bronx day care at the center of a fatal incident on Friday passed several city and state health inspections that did not include background checks on everyone living at the home-based center – nor check for fentanyl, city officials said.
A kilogram of fentanyl was found near mats that children used for napping at the day care site where one toddler died and three other children were hospitalized last week, the police said.
Adams’ office quietly ended legal challenges against most of the upstate county governments that were sued by New York City over their emergency orders meant to bar migrants.
The legal challenges were abandoned after a judge ruled that the city would have to bring each case in the individual counties, making it a logistical nightmare for the Big Apple’s legal department.
New York City’s comptroller threatened to revoke Adams’ emergency powers to ink contracts involving migrant housing, saying more scrutiny needs to be given to embattled contractor DocGo.
Comptroller Brad Lander announced his plans to have his office conduct it first-ever “real-time” audit of the services for which DocGo bills the city. It’s the first audit of that type the comptroller has launched since taking office nearly two years ago.
Under normal circumstances, audits by Lander’s team follow the completion of a contract. In this case, Lander said, scrutiny will begin as soon as DocGo’s invoices are received.
Last week, with the number of migrants in New York City shelters reaching some 60,000, demands for solutions to the long-simmering crisis reached a crescendo – as did the finger pointing.
Adams said New York City is committed to being carbon neutral by 2050, and unveiled new measures to reduce emissions from buildings.
“Desperation is inspiration,” Adams said as he convened multiple sustainability events running parallel to the United Nations General Assembly.
New York’s City Council is now spending some of its time advancing a plan that could kill off monuments honoring figures such as George Washington.
Subway crime has plummeted about 5% so far this year compared to last – with arrests and summonses on the rails soaring by more than 50% during the same period, the latest NYPD statistics show.
Bally’s bid to put a casino at Ferry Point appeared to get a boost yesterday, as elected officials cheered the casino chain’s promise to launch a free 10-stop bus route in the transit-challenged east Bronx.
New York public universities received a significant boost in what the U.S. News & World Report is calling “the most significant methodological change” to its decades-old rankings, while some private colleges tumbled under the revamped formula.
Plug Power, one of the Capital Region’s fastest-growing public companies, has settled a civil inquiry with federal regulators over the company’s past accounting problems.
The union representing more than 1,000 State Police investigators have reelected Tim Dymond as president.
Dozens who testified at a hearing hosted by state Attorney General Letitia James at Russell Sage College asked her to use her authority to prevent the proposed closure of Troy’s only maternity ward.
One of the largest mains in the City of Troy’s water system ruptured yesterday, flooding a Lansingburgh street and the basements of nearby homes.
A judge denied an appeal to dismiss disorderly conduct and obstructing government administration charges against Saratoga Black Lives Matter leader Lexis Figuereo that stemmed from a raucous April 4 City Council meeting.
Vassar, a liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie that was once all-women, where tuition this year is $67,000, has systematically paid its female full professors less than their male counterparts for the past two decades, according to a recent federal lawsuit.
The suit, filed last month by five former or current tenured faculty members, has roiled the left-leaning campus with allegations of unequal pay, delayed promotions for female professors and a discriminatory performance-evaluation system.
