Forget constitutional separation of powers for a moment: The federal judiciary (Article III) is unabashedly appealing to President Obama (Article II) for help in undoing some of this year’s budget cuts in fiscal 2014.
As congressional leaders and the administration seek to reach a 2014 spending deal, the judicial branch “will not have a seat at the table,” Judge John Bates, secretary of the Judicial Conference of the United States, wrote in a letter released today asking Obama to help make a case to raise court funding above this year’s sequester level.
The sequester, which cost the courts almost $350 million, has led to steep cuts to drug and mental health treatment, federal indigent defense, and GPS monitoring, Bates said, adding that a hard freeze at current levels in 2014 would further diminish “all facets of court operations.”
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So John Roberts and John Bates, loyal Right-wingers, are running to Obama to save them? With the rest of their Republican cronies who head up the various “Judicial Conference of the United States” committees?
Where the hell were they when Congress was hurtling toward sequestration in the FIRST place?
This is rich.