Trump Administration Could Test Impoundment Authority

The Trump administration may soon bring the word “impoundment” back into the modern American’s political lexicon. As the new administration attempts to cut government spending, it’s likely to test the legality of the president withholding the spending of federal funds allocated by Congress.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who chairs the Joint Economic Committee, told The Daily Signal, “Americans elected Donald Trump to cut wasteful spending and reform the federal government, and that’s exactly what he is doing.”

“Attempts to sabotage this legitimate exercise of executive authority by district court judges will fail, and I expect the Supreme Court to reaffirm his constitutional prerogatives. I have also introduced a bill to repeal the [Congressional Budget and] Impoundment Control Act, restoring the president’s constitutional role in saving the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people,” Lee said. 

The legal challenges to the Trump administration’s actions are currently working their way through the court system. Chief Justice John Roberts recently permitted the Trump administration’s temporary pause on about $2 billion in foreign aid to continue until further review. The chief justice will now have to make a permanent decision about the pause or send it to the full Supreme Court for review. 

On Tuesday, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, the head of the Government Accountability Office, testified before members of Congress. He assured members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he was carefully looking into the matter of whether the Trump administration had violated the Impoundment Control Act. 

“I fully intend to carry out our responsibilities under the [Congressional Budget and] Impoundment Control Act, expeditiously and thoroughly,” Dodaro told members of Congress. 

The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act was passed in 1974 after then-President Richard Nixon had withheld nearly $15 billion in federal funding in 1973. Former Congressional Budget Office Director Dan Crippen described the legislation as “a congressional check on unilateral action by the president to impound appropriated funding.”

The 1974 law allows for a process whereby the president can submit rescissions of federal spending through the Office of Management and Budget. The rescinded funds are not spent for 45 continuous session” days after Congress receives the message from OMB. At that point, if Congress has not acted on changing the appropriation of the funds, then they must be spent. The president is limited to submitting the same rescission proposal only once per year. 

The Trump administration has taken a fervent approach to cutting waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has moved to cut nearly $60 billion from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Trump has also established a full-time federal government agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, to identify places where the federal governance apparatus can be less costly and more cost-effective. 

Dodaro explained that he was carefully evaluating the Trump administration’s actions, so that if he had to take the administration to court, he would win in the legal challenge. 

“There are a lot of factors that go into making these decisions, and one is how specific Congress was in appropriations law to begin with,” Dodaro explained. 

The United States is currently running a $36 trillion national debt. The federal government now spends more on net interest payments to service the debt than on national defense or Medicare. Congress is currently working on the fiscal year 2026 budget, which could raise the debt ceiling by an additional $4 trillion. At some point, Congress and the president will have to deal with the long-term fiscal problems in the country.

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