President-elect Donald Trump is determined to cut federal spending significantly using whatever method he can and that may include impoundment – a little-known power once given to the president to reject Congressional-appropriated funds.
Falling largely in line with his recent threat to use recess appointments to evade Senate approval for cabinet positions, Trump has a backup plan to circumvent federal spending should Congress continue to allocate money to projects, agencies or departments he does not support.
Last year, the then-Republican candidate announced his intent to reinstate and invoke presidential impoundment power to “squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”
“With Impoundment, we can simply choke off the money,” Trump said in a video. “This policy is anti-inflation, anti-swamp, anti-globalist—and it’s pro-growth, pro-taxpayer, pro-American, and pro-freedom.”
Trump’s plan would first require a successful challenge to the current restrictions on impoundment power – something he also promised to pursue – because Congress scaled back its usage after former president Richard Nixon abused it.
Impoundment is an executive act by the president to withhold, delay or reject funding that Congress has already allocated. However, impoundment powers were significantly scaled back in 1974 with the Impoundment Control Act.
The Constitution does not explicitly give the president the power to reject Congressional appropriations. Instead, it gives Congress oversight of federal funds and the president in charge of executing the law that has been interpreted as indirect impoundment power.
Former president Thomas Jefferson was the first to use the power in 1801 by delaying the Congressional allocated $50,000 for U.S. Navy gunboats. It was part of his effort to reduce international tensions over the port of New Orleans.
Eventually, the Louisiana Purchase made the gunboat funding unnecessary.
Impoundment was a relatively rare use of power, until Nixon’s administration. He used it to push back on Congress’s appropriations of funds to programs he opposed by “impounding” billions of dollars in appropriated funds.
Feeling as though he was unfairly using his authority, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act that required the president to obtain Congressional approval to rescind specific government spending.
A Supreme Court case confirmed that ruling stating the president “cannot frustrate the will of Congress by killing a program through impoundment.”
In order for Trump to use the power, which he misrepresented as a 200-year-old “undisputed” law the president can “stop unnecessary spending,” he would need to challenge it in court and get the ruling overturned.
Already, Trump has tapped Tesla CEO Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficiency, a made-up committee tasked with suggesting massive reductions and cuts to reduce government spending.
