Thoughts on Executive "Orders"

I want to address these point by point, but let me first explain why they're "orders" and not just orders. Two of the four main items weren't even orders, they were memoranda. Think of them as fancy office memos. The other two are pretty limited in scope, and it's fairly easy to argue that all four will be moderately effective at best in helping anyone.

Let's look at each of these in turn and explore why they're all fairly toothless and ineffectual.

1) Payroll Tax Deferral - Likely Legal

This one doesn't really do much, except defer when the taxes will be collected. There is no "cut," since the executive holds no power to levy or reduce taxes. He can only control "the execution of the laws," and so in this case is telling the IRS to collect the tax later.

Only a few problems:

1. Payroll companies and HR departments aren't set up for this. It would require them to change their software to track what they're supposed to collect, but to not collect it now. Then later (at some unspecified date), they'd collect it. It's not legally clear when this later collection would have to happen, but bleh...
2. People aren't paying less in taxes, they're just paying them a month or two (or 6) down the line. 
3. This has NO EFFECT on people who are unemployed, and are thus suffering the most, since they don't have paychecks, and thus don't pay payroll taxes

I think it's safe to say that #3 is the biggest problem, and the one people are talking about the least.

2)  Unemployment Aid Extended - Possibly Legal

In this case the president is pulling from FEMA disaster funds right before hurricane season kicks off, so sounds like a great idea. That being said, it has other problems too:

1. It maxes out at $400, 2/3 of the current benefit (before that benefit expired two weeks ago). So, in effect, it's a cut from where people were that was keeping them afloat.
2. It only works if the state kicks in extra money first. Want the full $400? Your state first needs to authorize giving you an extra $100 from their pocket, and the Feds kick in the other $300. Think states will be authorizing extra money in this environment? Yeah, think again.
3. It only has enough funds for 5 weeks. Yeah, you read that previous sentence right, though because of the problem laid out in #2, maybe the funds will last far longer because no one can use them because states won't kick in any money to start with.

Who knows, but the above problems are real problems, and even if states do give extra money(#2), look at #3 again. It's not good.

3) "Halting" Evictions - Definitely Legal

This is possible the stupidest and most useless of the four. It order federal agencies to think about whether to stop evictions in some cases.

Yeah, let's think about it. Maybe we should. Who knows, but it's safe to say that thinking about it won't do much on a massive scale. 

This one is definitely legal, hands down, precisely for the reasons that it's so fucking stupid and toothless.

4) Student Loan Forgiveness - Definitely Legal

This actually seems like the most useful, and definitely in the legal camp. It extends the 0% interest rate on student loans and pauses payments until the end of the year. This is well within the purview of the Feds, and doesn't seem to be pushing any major legal envelopes. 

My one critique of this? Why not go further and actually cancel some amount of student debt? It wouldn't cost that much in the grand scheme of things, and could have profound consequences on individual people's lives. Maybe wipe out $10,000 or $20K of people's debt. For lower income folks that extra couple hundred bucks a month could have a really positive impact, both in their lives, and in the extra money that would be plowed into the economy in their local communities.

Conclusion

Trump's overall actions seem mostly legal. They also seem mostly ineffective or, at best, moderately effective in some limited cases ($400 a week isn't nothing, even if it does only last 5 weeks).

The problems we're facing are much bigger than any we've seen since the Great Depression and WWII. This is not the time for small solutions. In a future post I hope to share a few solutions that would be drastically better and more effective, but that (unfortunately) would absolutely require buy in from Congress. 

That last part is why we're all fucked....