Trump’s Attempt to Usurp Congress’s Spending Power
The Trump Administration is undertaking what amounts to a wide-ranging assault on Congress’s power of the purse, seeking instead to usurp authority over federal spending. Today, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo mandating a “temporary pause” on the disbursement of nearly all federal grants allocated by Congress, with the important exception of those going “directly to individuals” (as opposed to organizations and state and local governments). As in his first term, Trump is again planning to deny federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions unless they accept his dictates on immigration policy. Earlier, he suspended nearly all foreign aid programs, except those for Israel and Egypt. Trump also recently threatened to withhold disaster relief funds from California, unless they adopt his preferred changes to state election law. More generally, he and his underlings have far-reaching plans to “impound” federal spending they disapprove of.
In combination, this is a massive assault on Congress’ power over federal spending. The Spending Clause of the Constitution is clear in giving Congress, not the president, the power to allocate federal spending. When it comes to conditions imposed on grants to state and local governments, the Supreme Court has long made clear that they too must be imposed by Congress, and meet a number of other requirements, as well. Such conditions must, among other things, 1) be enacted and clearly indicated by Congress (the executive cannot make up its own grant conditions), 2) be related to the purposes of the grant in question (e.g. – grants for health care or education cannot be conditioned on immigration enforcement), and 3) not be “coercive.” Thus, for example, even Congress could not condition disaster aid on changes in state election law, because the two issues are not related.
Some might argue that many of the Administration’s actions on spending are no big deal because they are only “temporary.” But if the White House can “temporarily” withhold congressionally allocated funds for a month, why not for two months, or for two years? There is no logical stopping point here. And, indeed, Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, has argued that the president has a general power to “impound” congressionally authorized spending for as long as he wants.
Trump isn’t the first president to impinge on Congress’s spending power. Joe Biden, for example, did so by trying to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal student loans, without proper congressional authorization. I condemne
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