It’s time to raise some serious hell if we want to protect Social Security, Medicare, and the planet itself from these corrupt right-wing jurists.

Republicans are “this close” — just a matter of months away — from ending Social Security, a goal they’ve worked toward ever since 1935. They’re hoping to use six Republicans on a corrupted Supreme Court to get there.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse points out, in his book The Schemeand his YouTube series about same, that American oligarchs launched a campaign to seize control of the Supreme Court — and, thus, the American government — over 40 years ago and they’re now close to their goal of turning America back to the 1920s.

Recently we learned from ProPublica reporting that Clarence Thomas has been the featured attraction at several multi-million-dollar fundraising events put on by the Koch brothers to marshal resources that could apparently be used, in part, to bring cases before the Supreme Court. In previous years, the late Antonin Scalia often joined him at these events.

Now that the billionaires have succeeded in packing the Court with six hard-right justices who are perfectly willing to ignore federal law about ethics on federal courts and enthusiastic to dance to their benefactors’ tunes, we’re getting close to the point that David Koch envisioned in 1980 when he ran for Vice President on the Libertarian ticket.

His platform was clear, calling for the end of the EPA and other regulatory agencies, and the privatization of the Post Office, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schools, libraries, and all the nation’s roads and rivers, among other things.

Now, with two cases that the six corrupt Republicans on the Court will be hearing this fall, David could be getting his wish.

The first is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association (CFPB v CFSA), which could lead to a shutdown of not just the CFPB but Social Security and Medicare as well. All three of those programs are funded on an “open ended” basis without specific annual appropriations that mention how long they may exist or exactly how much money they can or must spend.

This is called “nondiscretionary spending” because these programs were designed by Congress as a permanent part of the American governmental landscape. Their funding legislation sets up perpetual and specific funds with specific funding mechanisms — the Social Security and Medicare funds are paid for by the FICA tax, and the Federal Reserve funds the CFPB — so they won’t be political footballs when it comes time for annual appropriations.

There’s also the problem that Medicare and Social Security have no way of knowing the exact dollar amounts they’ll spend each year; they can’t predict who’s going to get sick when, or who’s going to die or become disabled. (This is true for most federal agencies, which is why this lawsuit could also shut down everything from the USDA to the FDA to the EPA.)

The plaintiffs in CFPB v CFSA argue that the provision of the Constitution that lets Congress set up agencies and fund them requires that Congress also set specific lifetimes and exact specific annual funding levels for all agencies. This is based on Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution, which says:

“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.”

Nowhere, of course, does the Constitution say that agencies that don’t have specific lifetimes or specific annual budgets are outlawed. The idea is, on its face, bizarre. But the Fifth Circuit of Appeals has already ruled — in the CFPB v CFSA case which the Supreme Court will hear this fall — that that’s exactly what the Constitution says.

As legal scholar and author Ian Millhiser notes over at Vox:

“If taken seriously, moreover, this argument would invalidate most federal spending, and it would make it impossible for benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare to even exist.”

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  conservatives, corruption, supremecourt