This content was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning analytical newspaper.
Donald Trump has a bold plan to cut a number of federal service as he enters his second term. Trump and his supporters intend to challenge an obscure legal theory that states that presidents have broad authority to deny funding from programs they oppose rather than relying on his side’s control of Congress to reduce the budget.
” We can essentially drown off the money”, Trump said in a 2023 plan picture. It was undeniable that the leader had the legal authority to halt unneeded spending for 200 times under our system of government.
His plan, known as “impoundment”, threatens to inspire a big fight over the boundaries of the government’s power over the finances. The professional branch’s responsibility is to effectively distribute the funds, whereas the Constitution grants Congress the ultimate authority to do so. However, Trump and his experts claim that if he opposes or thinks they waste money, he can unilaterally disregard Congress ‘ spending decisions and “impound” resources.
Trump’s models on the funds are part of his administration’s larger strategy to consolidate since much energy in the professional tree as possible. He pressed for the Senate to go into corner this month to assign his government without any supervision. Republicans in charge of the room have so far declined to do so. His key experts have spelled out plans to bring independent organizations, such as the Department of Justice, under democratic control.
If Trump were to veto congressionally authorized programs, it would almost certainly spark a battle in the courts and Congress, according to experts, and it would ultimately affect the foundation of Congress.
Eloise Pasachoff, a Georgetown Law teacher who has written about the national finances and appropriations process, said,” It’s an effort to take the full power of the purse apart from Congress,”” but that’s just not the legal design.” The president is not permitted to “pull out the things he does n’t want” and “go into the budget” slowly.
Trump’s claim to have impoundment power is in contravention of a Nixon-era law that forbids presidents from cutting spending and a number of federal court decisions that forbid presidents from repressing spending without the consent of Congress.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the newly established non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, announced in an op-ed published on Wednesday that they planned to reduce federal spending and fire civil servants. Some of their efforts could result in Trump taking his first Supreme Court appearance under the post-Watergate Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which requires the president to spend money that only the people who vote vote to receive it. The law allows exceptions, such as when the executive branch can spend less money to accomplish Congress ‘ objectives, but not as a means for the president to sabotage initiatives he opposes.
Trump and his supporters have been leaking their plans for a hostile budgeting process for months. In his campaign video, Trump criticized the 1974 law as” not a very good act” and said,” Bringing back impoundment will give us a crucial tool to obliterate the Deep State.”
Musk and Ramaswamy have seized that mantle, writing,” We believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question”.
Thanks to former Trump administration employees who continue to be his close allies, the once-obscure debate over impoundment is in high demand in MAGA circles. Russell Vought, Trump’s former budget director, and Mark Paoletta, who served under Vought as the Office of Management and Budget general counsel, have worked to popularize the idea from the Trump-aligned think tank Vought founded, the Center for Renewing America.
On Friday, Trump announced he had picked Vought to lead OMB again. In a statement, Trump said,” Russ knows exactly how to end the Weaponized Government and bring about the return of self-government to the people.”
Vought was also a prominent figure in Project 2025, which was highly contested. Vought boasted in private remarks to a gathering of MAGA luminaries that ProPublica identified as having assembled a” shadow” Office of Legal Counsel so that Trump is fully prepared for his agenda on day one.
According to Vought,” I do n’t want President Trump to lose a moment of time in legal, doable, or moral debates in the Oval Office.”
Vought and Trump spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s potential to swob inordinate control of federal funds is not just about reducing the size of the federal government, a long-standing conservative goal. Additionally, it aggravates existing concerns about his vengeance promises.
A similar power grab led to his first impeachment. Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to launch a corruption investigation into Joe Biden and his family while holding up nearly$ 400 million in military aid to Ukraine during his first term. In the end, the US Government Accountability Office determined that his deeds were in violation of the Impoundment Control Act.
Pasachoff predicted that the incoming Trump administration would attempt to accomplish the impoundment goals without choosing a fight with such a high profile.
According to Bobby Kogan, a former OMB adviser under Biden and senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning think tank American Progress, Trump used piecemeal methods to withhold federal funding in order to punish his perceived enemies. Trump delayed or refrained from signing disaster declarations that would have opened up federal aid because neither state had voted for him after the devastating wildfires in California and Washington. He focused on so-called sanctuary cities by limiting local law enforcement’s capacity to support mass deportation efforts. In the end, the policy was withheld by the Biden administration.
According to Trump and his supporters, Thomas Jefferson was the first to impound the president’s long history.
According to Zachary Price, a professor at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco, the military and instances where presidents were expressly permitted to use discretion are the most prominent historical examples. For instance, Jefferson made the decision to not use the money that the law authorized him to use to fund” a sum not exceeding fifty thousand dollars” to fund gunboats, which authorized him to do so.
President Richard Nixon took impoundment to a new extreme, wielding the concept to gut billions of dollars from programs he simply opposed, such as highway improvements, water treatment, drug rehabilitation and disaster relief for farmers. Both the courts and Congress overwhelmingly opposed him. In the end, the Supreme Court and more than a half-dozen federal judges decided that Nixon had no authority to cut specific programs under the appropriations bills.
Vought and his allies argue the limits Congress placed in 1974 are unconstitutional, saying a clause in the Constitution obligating the president to “faithfully execute” the law also implies his power to forbid its enforcement. Trump likes to say that Article II, where this clause is located, grants him” the right to do whatever I want as president.”
The Supreme Court has never directly questioned constitutionality in regards to impoundment. But it threw water on that reasoning in an 1838 case, Kendall v US, about a federal debt payment.
” To contend that the obligation imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully executed, implies a power to forbid their execution, is a novel construction of the constitution, and entirely inadmissible”, the justices wrote.
During his cutting spree, Nixon’s own Justice Department argued roughly the same.
In a 1969 legal memo, Nixon later appointed the Office of Legal Counsel, William Rehnquist, warned that” we must come to the conclusion that the existence of such a broad power is supported by neither reason nor precedent.”
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