The Boston Tea Party and the Dangerous Echo of Executive Power
I want to start somewhere unexpected: Boston Harbor, December 1773. A cold night, three ships, and a group of colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians prying open crates of tea and hurling them into the sea. The issue was not the tea, nor its price. It was the principle that government cannot tax or spend without the consent of the governed. The colonists understood that accepting Parliament’s Tea Act—even with cheaper tea—meant accepting taxation without representation. They would not.
Samuel Adams warned, “Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble at the price of their own posterity’s liberty.” John Adams called the event “an epocha in history.” They knew that the argument was not about commodities, but about control. Who decides? By what authority? To whom is government accountable?
That question became the core of our Constitution. And that is the question now.
This week, the Trump administration directed the Department of Defense to pay furloughed military personnel by diverting funds from other appropriations without congressional approval. The question is not whether the troops deserve to be paid. Of course they do. The question is: Who holds the power of the purse?
The founders were unambiguous. They placed control of federal spending not in the presidency, but in Congress—specifically the House of Representatives, the branch closest to the people. James Madison wrote that the power of the purse is “the most complete and effectual weapon” the people possess against overreach. Thomas Jefferson warned that blending executive and legislative powers is “precisely the definition of despotic government.”
To prevent that blending, Congress enacted the Anti-Deficiency Act after the Civil War, explicitly forbidding the executive branch from spending money for any purpose not approved by Congress. It is a bulwark against exactly the kind of unilateral action we saw this week.
Yet members of Congress—Democrats and Republicans alike—are now learning through news reports that programs in their districts have been frozen or gutted without their knowledge. One lawmaker admitted, “I didn’t even know our funding had been reallocated until I saw it on TV.”
When elected representatives must read headlines to learn how taxpayer money is being spent, the separation of powers is already eroding.
We have seen presidents assert extraordinary authority during wartime or national emergency—Lincoln during the Civil War, Roosevelt during World War II—but even then, both sought explicit congressional authorization. Even during previous government shutdowns, Congress passed emergency measures to ensure service members were paid without breaching constitutional lines.
No president has ever claimed the authority to reshuffle appropriated funds at will. Until now.
This is not efficiency. It is not creativity. It is a step toward executive supremacy—government by decree.
In 1773, Parliament claimed the right to tax “in all cases whatsoever.” The colonists rejected it.
In 2025, a president has claimed the right to spend “in any way necessary.” The danger is the same.
The founders did not fight a revolution to replace one king with another. They built checks and balances precisely so that no single man—no matter how popular, powerful, or praised—could override the will of the people.
So yes—pay the troops. But pay them the constitutional way.
Call Congress back into session. Hold a vote. Pass a law. Respect the system we inherited.
Because once we begin trading legality for convenience, once we allow one man to decide where the people’s money goes, the Revolution becomes a myth we recite instead of a principle we defend.
The tea floats again, not as a protest—but as a warning.
