From the Facebook page of Jim Wright/“Stonekettle Station”;
Update 12/20/18 18:52: Kolfage's gofundme is at nearly $9 Million now.
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U.S. Constitution Article I "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law."
A guy name Brian Kolfage started a GoFundMe to raise $1 Billion to build Trump's wall.
Now, I know who Kolfage is. I'm not going to talk about that, yet. Let's just say he's known to those of us who keep an eye on this sort of thing, and this isn't the first time he's raised money online for one of his causes. If you're thinking about donating, maybe look into those and see were the money went. Or ask him.
That said, how does this work?
Leaving aside the ironic part where a bunch of ultra conservatives, who think taxes are theft, are now handing over MORE of their money to an internet scheme that alleges it will gift that money to the GOVERNMENT for some boondoggle project than they ever got back from Trump's tax break give-away to billionaires ... how does this work?
How does it work?
Let's say this is on the up and up. Sure. At the moment the donation drive is just a bit under $5 million. That's about one half of 1% of Kolfage's stated goal. It took him three days to get that far. At the rate he's going, in just about 2 years he'll have reached his $1 billion goal, which is about 1/25th of what it's estimated the wall will actually cost.
So, two years from now, Kolfage has $1 billion that he's going to give to the US government to build a wall along the US/Mexico border (or "boarder" in Trumpspeak).
What's the mechanism?
I mean, you CAN give money to the US Treasury. And people do.
There's a whole US Treasury department for handling such donations.
The Bureau of the Fiscal Service:
"Citizens who wish to make a general donation to the U.S. government may send contributions to a specific account called 'Gifts to the United States.'"
"This account was established in 1843 to accept gifts, such as bequests, from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States. Money deposited into this account is for general use by the federal government and can be available for budget needs."
Wait, what was that last bit?
"These contributions are considered an unconditional gift to the government. Financial gifts can be made by check or money order payable to the United States Treasury and mailed to the address below.
Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Funds Management Branch
P.O. Box 1328
Parkersburg, WV 26106-1328"
No, no. Back up, what was that bit about "general use by the federal government?"
Oh, yeah. That.
You can donate money to the federal government, but you can't specify how the government spends it.
The government can't accept financial gifts with conditions. Thus, that line about "unconditional gift."
You can give the money to the US. But you can't put conditions on it.
If you put conditions on the donation, the government can't accept it. By law.
CONGRESS decides how to spend the money. Congress can ONLY spend money through legislation, which the president must sign into law.
It's right there in the Constitution.
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7: "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."
By law, Congress controls the power of the purse.
It IS possible to use private money to fund public works. The Washington Monument was repaired with both Public and Private money. Famously, billionaire David Rubenstein donated $7.5 million dollars to the effort. HOWEVER, that process was a complex financial arrangement between US Park Service and the nonprofit Trust for the National Mall and required that congress pass special legislation. Rebenstein didn't just roll up and hand over a check to the US Treasury.
And funding of repairs to a national monument is vastly, vastly different from private funding of NATIONAL DEFENSE.
Now, I suppose you COULD attempt to do an end run around this. Republicans have tried such in the past. Oh yes. You remember, right? Sure you do. The Iran-Contra Affair, when Congress declined to fund Reagan's war in Nicaragua.
So, members of the Reagan Administration -- chief among them the guy who is nowadays the president of the National Rifle Association -- secretly raised money through private donations, set up dozens of dummy corporations, illegally sold US military arms to IRAN, in order to fund the Contras in Nicaragua using money that Congress had no control over and no knowledge of.
Remind me, how did that work out?
The power of the Purse is one of THE primary Checks and Balances of our government. It's one of the primary methods of constraining presidential power.
Congress decides how the money is spent for a REASON.
Private funding of National Security would be an end run around EVERYTHING the Constitution was designed to prevent.
Congress decides how the money is spent.
Half of Congress is the House.
The House, which will be a Democratic Party majority in just over two weeks.
And will remain a Democratic Party majority at least until the next election -- which if you were paying attention, is about the same time period it will take for this GoFundMe to raise $1 billion if the current rate holds (spoiler: it won't).
Now, the GoFundMe says that if it doesn't reach its goal, or Kolfage CAN'T force the government to only spend the money on a wall, he'll give all the money back. Every penny. That's what he said. And maybe he even means it this time.
But the timing is interesting.
He'll have (perhaps) a billion dollars donated by hard line conservatives. Millions, at the very least.
Right before the 2020 election.
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