The issue is not if the fund is needed or not, it is that congress never specified how much the Universal Service Fund tax would be. The FCC keeps raising the tax rate. 10% of your mobile phone bill now goes to this fund that seems was decided by bureaucrats at the FCC and not by Congress. If the court strikes it down, then Congress will have to step in, which seems appropriate.
> The issue is not if the fund is needed or not, it is that congress never specified how much the Universal Service Fund tax would be.
Congress could, if they didn't like the regulators' chosen amount, set a new fixed amount with a couple lines of legislation and a vote. Done in a day.
If Congress chose not to specify it and therefore delegate the decision, shouldn't it be up to them to pass a new law to specify it if needed if they think the executive branch has raised it too much?
Why is this a situation where the supreme court should step in?
The legal question is identified in the original reporting on the lower court's ruling:
> Oldham said the USF funding method unconstitutionally delegates congressional taxing authority to the FCC and a private entity tapped by the agency, the Universal Service Administrative Company, to determine how much to charge telecommunications companies. Oldham wrote that “the combination of Congress’s broad delegation to FCC and FCC’s subdelegation to private entities certainly amounts to a constitutional violation.”
This certainly seems to me like an important question for the Court to weigh in on. The power to tax is clearly Congress's, but it's not clear that we should want Congress to have the power to delegate that power to anyone they choose.
And the FCC is empowered by Congress to act on their behalf.
It's the same top-down approach used all over the business world and organizations like the military. The people at the top make high level decisions and empower those below them to handle the fine details.
I don't go to the board of directors of my company to approve every decision I make. They outline strategic goals, hand those to the CEO, who gives plans to the heads of departments, who hand them down to me.
It's so weird to see people latch onto this idea that Congress needs to handle the minutia of governing when we know that top-heavy, leaders-make-every-decision form of governing doesn't work. Imagine a drive thru operator needing board approval to substitute mayonnaise for ketchup on an order because the Article 1 Section 8 of the corporate charter says the board has sole responsibility over the menu, and mayonnaise on a burger is not on the current menu.
Neither is overturning one as unconstitutional that Congress explicitly created and the President signed into law, especially on the sole basis of "well we're not certain Congress still wants it, even though they could get rid of it easily if they cared".
I believe the argument is that Congress is not constitutionally allowed to delegate determination of the amount of that tax because the first words in the US Constitution are "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States" and specifying the amount of that tax is clearly "legislation"? The executive branch is granted little or no legislative power.
From a practical standpoint at least some voters know who their US Senators and US Representative are and a few of those will actually look up how they voted on a tax hike or cut and include that information into their decision making process on who to vote for every two to six years. Very few voters know who the unelected bureaucrats in administrative agencies are, those bureaucrats change without the direct consent of voters, and they never stand for election.
The linked article says "Liberal and conservative justices alike said they were concerned about the potentially devastating consequences of eliminating the fund that has benefited tens of millions of Americans". It's fine that the court is "concerned" about this, however it is not something the court should consider in the slightest in their decision this case - those are the effects of policy decisions which should be left to elected legislators in a properly functioning democracy. If the court finds in favor of the plaintiffs, Congress is free to go do their job and pass legislation that specifies the amount of the tax just as they do with Federal income tax (showing they have the _ability_ to do so).
> I believe the argument is that Congress is not constitutionally allowed to delegate determination of the amount of that tax because the first words in the US Constitution are "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States" and specifying the amount of that tax is clearly "legislation"?
The powers "herein granted" include "To provide and maintain a Navy", but that doesn't mean they can't delegate aspects of running the Navy to the Executive. We don't have to pass a new law every time the Navy sails a ship to Australia.
That's because you changed what's actually happening to something way bigger, so then you can immediately say it's not minutiae.
This isn't taxes, this is one very specific and small tax. And this isn't levied by the FCC, it's levied by Congress. The FCC just gets to say what percentage of this specific tax is applicable.
So the FCC gets the power to change what percentage of phone bills should go towards universal telephony access. Put this way, you know, the thing that's actually happening, it does seem like minutiae.
I doubt Congress has any idea what percentage of phone bills should go towards universal access because they're not telecommunications experts. They don't know how hard, or easy, it may be to run rural lines. They don't know what lines are still needed. They don't know where they're needed. In fact, they don't even know what phone bills should cost!
the rollout of this program has gone badly.. when there is a button to push for more money, that seems to be the one thing that always does happen. Pure theory does not deal with the actual implementation of this national program.
entertaining and skilled - recommend Princeton University, Center for Information Technology Project, "No WANs Land: Mapping US Broadband Coverage" .. you might be surprised!
It's probably not, but the current administration doesn't want to pay any of the bills for the people producing their food. A penny spent on the less fortunate is one that doesn't go into their pockets.
these pennies do power the inernet and phones of your libraries though. And compared to the overall budget, calling these costs pennies is a magnitude too large.
I was making a point that they are only trying to steal and hoard money, which when they are the only ones with money, money will have no value and you can't eat them.
My complaint with presidential nominees having extensive power is that it moves too much policy to hinge on a single, nationwide election. As we've seen, that can lead to extreme instability versus congressional legislation.
If the USF is struck down two things will happen
1. Elon will get feweer subsidies. Starlink is enriched heavily by USF
2. Rural areas will be continue to have terrible options for terrestrial services.
3. There may be a resurgence of municipal-owned internet but the ISPs seem to have sued that out of existence to date.
Maybe congress will just rewrite a new USF. I wonder what satellite internet company would magically be the only one who can meet the new USF requirements?
Elon already receives subsidies from USF. All of Elon's riches come from government funds. If Elon has a company or project, you should just assume it is funded by government contracts, grants, and subsidies because it likely is in some capacity.
I don't know where the USF monies go but it certainly isn't here.
I suspect the likes of AT&T and Google get the lion's share and then through sleight of hand it somehow funds build outs of fiber in large metro areas. If it weren't for the local independent telcos scratching and clawing for a few crumbs, there wouldn't be any FTH in rural areas.
A few years back .gov allocated considerable funds for expanding, presumably, FTH in "rural" areas. The state I live in did the same. So far in the AT&T monopoly, not an inch of fiber has been plowed that I can see. Most of the funds have probably been laundered back to the politicians and the status quo remains.
A new WISP has been putting up sites over the past several months in parts of the AT&T service area with no other terrestrial service available. This, even in the age of Star Link. I doubt they would be doing so unless they had a pretty good idea that no FTH will be available for five to ten years or at least long enough to amortize their investment.
Like most taxes levied on We The People, the USF is a PR stunt intended to buy votes.
They should kill it. It makes no sense that the EPA can't do it's basic job but this shakedown exists.
Conservatives haven't had to live with the consequences of their decisions. They still get their farming subsidies. Their phone and Internet subsidized. Flood insurance. Countless other programs overwhelmingly help red states.
We used to have an agreement in this country. That everyone was going to be better off. Now the conservative story is all about hurting the right people.
So let's do it. Every state for themselves. Blue states can help other blue states if they want to. Same with red states. Cut off the basic function of the federal government.
I'm tired of my tax dollars helping people who don't want what's best for me and my family while I go out there and advocate for them.
This is a two-way street. Without money flowing in from other states, then who's going to buy that Kansas wheat? Increased competition for staple crops internationally is part of the reason why the USA began having a trade deficit for agriculture products in 2020, which has ballooned since.
Plus, without those subsidies the whole food economy would shift. Maybe those blue states import more from Mexico/Canada/Asia/Europe. Maybe they produce even more crops locally.
Most states used to grow enough food locally to sustain their populations. There's nothing stopping them from achieving self-sufficiency again. Especially with modern farming techniques.
I'd rather have wheat and no money, than money and no wheat. I suppose the people who would buy Kansas wheat would be anyone who wants wheat. The US currently considers food security a vital part of national security. The blue states in this scenario can outsource their food production if they want, and hope there's never any conflict which stops those shipments.
Luckily the blue states have ample access to multiple other food sources.
They also have access to all the ports importing phosphorus used in the supply chain to produce the fertilizer necessary for the red states to achieve such high yields.
It turns out that the modern world has an infinitely more complex economy and supply chain than just wheat and money
You got dogpiled because the OPs response is into perceived suffering being caused to the blue states already, and proposing that they respond in turn.
When you jumped in with your comments about wheat, it was not interpreted by the repliers as pointing out that they could also hurt them, it was perceived as you saying something along the lines of "well were gonna turn up the screws on ya then"
That elicits a fairly predictable reaction from most people.
Additionally they do have ports but most of their capacity is in the trivially blockaded Gulf of America
Blue states don't produce as much food because they don't have to. As soon as they would have to, they could. They'd take a bit of a hit on the price, but that's about it.
Red states don't need blue state money because they can sell their food elsewhere. (Well, maybe not to the best markets at the best prices in the current trade war climate but you get my drift.) They'd just take a bit of a hit on the price.
The unhappy reality is that different regions of this nation don't really need each other for base essentials. Now, for industrial inputs or outputs? Yeah, totally different story. But that's not regionality as much as it is just "everyone is dependent on Texas and California if you go far enough down the industrial rabbit hole".
Even that's just convenience though. Pretty much anywhere in the nation they can scale up to make what they need. They just don't because it's convenient to allow others to do it.
As soon as those others make it inconvenient, they'll do it themselves.
There's a big reason why the US subsidizes domestic food production, and you'd be throwing that all out by relying on other countries for food. Good luck, let's hope Brazil and the US always see eye to eye on everything.
National security doesn't stop being a thing if the US splits into two countries. It's just the national security interest of Blue America would not directly align with the national security interest of Red America. Blue America would probably still choose to maintain domestic food production for national security interests, but would just pay a whole lot more to subsidize the production than they are currently paying.
And blue states will retaliate. Need medical care? Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Bristol-Myers Squibb are all HQed in New Jersey, Pfizer in NYC, AbbVie in Chicago…
That was basically my original point - OP made it sound like red states only exist via the largesse of blue states.
I'm not really sure why my points have received so much push back, but OP received basically none at all for offering essentially a symmetrical argument to my own.
> Connecticut residents paid an average of $15,643 per person in federal taxes in 2015, according to a report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. Massachusetts paid $13,582 per person, New Jersey paid $13,137 and New York paid $12,820.
> At the other end, Mississippi residents paid an average of $5,740 per person, while West Virginia paid $6,349, Kentucky paid $6,626 and South Carolina paid $6,665.
> Mississippi received $2.13 for every tax dollar the state sent to Washington in 2015, according to the Rockefeller study. West Virginia received $2.07, Kentucky got $1.90 and South Carolina got $1.71.
> Meanwhile, New Jersey received 74 cents in federal spending for tax every dollar the state sent to Washington. New York received 81 cents, Connecticut received 82 cents and Massachusetts received 83 cents.
We like this setup, but I suspect blue states have more options for grain than red states have for doctors.
Poor countries, that make the poorest US state look like Monaco, have no problem producing doctors.
Also, as a general point, merely looking at total subsidy amount means nothing without looking at the reason for the subsidy. For example, if America builds a $10B early ICBM detection facility in Alaska, it will look like America is heavily subsidizing Alaska. Except, Alaska isn't actually a real threat to be nuked - NY, SF, LA, and DC are the ones that benefit.
It’s slower. Significantly slower. Farming is a mostly solved process now that can be automated. That’s why the labor force of agriculture went from the majority to like 2% of the population post industrialization.
Being a doctor is highly incentivized financially and culturally and we haven’t seen anywhere near that level of efficiency gains of training doctors.
At minimum each new doctor needs ~26 years to get to our standards. Lower it by a fuck ton, go a crazy as you want and you still are on a decade plus from deciding to mint a new dr to having your doogie bowser diagnosing people.
This is the same fucking mistake the South made during the civil war[1].
The red states do not appear to understand what it takes to run a modern economy
[1] “The North can make a steam engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth - right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with.”
As a thought for you: Red states heavily rely on undocumented laborers in order for farms to survive because even with their heavy subsidies they are not able to afford hiring Americans even at minimum wage. In this scenario where the red states are actively chasing away the workforce they need to survive, how are they going to maintain food production?
You're telling me that you believe the richest country in the history of the world, with some of the highest levels of mechanization and industrialization in the history of the world, with some of the most efficient agricultural production in the history of the world, cannot afford to grow food without essentially slave labor?
> In 1990, the average real farm wage for nonsupervisory crop and livestock workers was just over half the average real wage in the nonfarm economy for private-sector nonsupervisory occupations ($11.71 versus $23.19, in 2023 dollars). By 2023, the farm wage ($17.55) was equal to 61 percent of the nonfarm wage ($28.93). In other words, the gap between farm and nonfarm wages is slowly shrinking, but still substantial.
> The share of hired crop farmworkers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States grew from roughly 14 percent in 1989–91 to almost 55 percent in 1999–2001; in recent years it has declined to about 40 percent. In 2020–22, 32 percent of crop farmworkers were U.S. born, 7 percent were immigrants who had obtained U.S. citizenship, 19 percent were other authorized immigrants (primarily permanent residents or green-card holders), and the remaining 42 percent held no work authorization.
Maybe we can't find enough labor because 50% of the workers are working illegally, voluntarily and involuntarily accept illegal working standards, and are suppressing wages far below what they should naturally be.
Is your argument that if we kicked every illegal immigrant out of America tomorrow, that Americans would just choose to starve instead of paying slightly more for food, and farmers would just let food rot on the vine instead of harvesting it?
> Is your argument that if we kicked every illegal immigrant out of America tomorrow, that Americans would just choose to starve instead of paying slightly more for food, and farmers would just let food rot on the vine instead of harvesting it?
Oh, they wouldn't choose. They'd just have that as the inevitable consequence. Famines happen; just wishing them away isn't really a great approach.
It doesn't help that these decisions take months/years to show their impacts.
How many famines have happened because ample food was readily available, but farmers didn't want to pay a slightly elevated wage to workers to pick the food?
In this scenario, some farmer is going to choose to pay $20/hr for farm workers, and rake in insane profits if there really is a famine. In fact, almost all farms would choose to pay more to collect their food and sell it at a large premium in the case of a food shortage.
> some farmer is going to choose to pay $20/hr for farm workers
And hope that in six months, the trade war hasn't been settled? They won't be paid until the crop matures, and there's a lot of labor before that point. You're also competing with other countries, from whom we already import agricultural goods at reasonable prices.
Again, decisions that lead to famine don't do so instantly.
This is short sighted. Where will all those red state farmers go to sell their food if it doesn't go to the large population centers which are mostly located in blue states? It won't be to USAID, China, or any of the other places that it used to go to who are rapidly going from allies to economic adversaries. So now the farmers have no income to buy anything else they need to live or even repay their loans. Given our allies have figured out that they should target their economic pain at red states, it is likely far easier for blue states to find a new food supplier than it is for red states to create entirely new markets for existing American crops.
>Good luck getting food to your blue states, since 8/10 of the top food producing states in the US are red states.
7/10, not 8/10:
#1 (California) is solid blue (Dem trifecta,2 Dem Senators, Dem US House majority, Dem 2024 Pres vote)
#5 (Illinois) is solid blue (Dem trifecta,2 Dem Senators, Dem US House majority, Dem 2024 Pres vote)
#6 (Minnesota) is quite blue (Dem state senate, tied state house, dem governor, 2 dem senators, tied US house delegation, Dem 2024 Pres vote)
"I have a brilliant plan, I'll take all this food I have grown and throw it in the trash! I'll show those pesky Blues who is the real boss! I will destroy my livlihood to own those damn libs! Now where is my crop subsidy and stimmy check?"
> Also, the red states could sell the food to blue states, but just at a much higher margin than they currently do.
The farms and just about everything else in "red" states are subsidized by the "blue" states. Their farms are not sustainable nor really competitive without those subsidies. They're completely financially ruined without subsidies and their largest customers. They're not going to be able to replace the "blue" states ports and neither Canada or Mexico are likely going to be interested in transporting their wares without hefty tariffs.
It's almost like the country works because various groups work together under common legal frameworks despite ideological differences and uncompromising culture ware is short sided idiocy.
> Also also, I'm not the one who invented this ridiculous scenario of every state for themselves, that was OP.
It's not strictly an invention of the OP. The current administration is fully advocating for ripping away funding and benefits to blue states. In a world where the federal government is ensuring that the tax dollars these states pay do not benefit said state at all, there is no rational reason for said state to continue contributing to the union as opposed to clawing back those tax dollars and investing directly in their own state.
