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Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that President Donald Trump was violating of The Impoundment Control Act passed in 1974. Co-host Joe Scarborough said, “So since you’re on the Appropriations Committee, you’re the perfect person to ask. Is the continued impoundment by DOGE of funds authorized and appropriated by Congress, is that a constitutional violation of Article I powers?” Baldwin said, “It absolutely is. And it is so clear in Article I that Congress makes the laws, passes the budgets and the appropriation bills. And it is the administration, the president, who implements and administers those....

Few of President Trump’s actions early in his second term have provoked as much furor as the executive order freezing certain federal spending programmes. A federal trial judge in Rhode Island issued a nationwide injunction against the freeze, insisting that he intends to stop the administration from “any federal funding pause”. Five former Treasury secretaries published a protest op-ed in The New York Times, warning that “not since the Nixon administration has this type of executive action been contemplated”. They’re right about that. Trump’s assertion of the president’s power to pause funding — the right of impoundment — reverses the...

Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said Thursday on CNN’s “Newsroom” that the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, would be “unconstitutional and illegal.” Host Jim Acosta said, “I want to ask you about something that is coming into your wheelhouse. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy apparently will be up on Capitol Hill talking about their ideas for this thing that they’re calling DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is a bit of a misnomer because it won’t be a part of the federal government, apparently but Congress controls the purse strings. What are your...

I see some news articles on impoundment, which is the main plan to reduce government spending by not spending the money that congress appropriates to support various government activities…Can Trump do it? Can they override the 1974 law restricting iimpoundment and the 1975 Supreme Court ruling supporting the law? At its worst impoundment defies the will of the people. At its best impoundment stops government spending on activities that are no longer justified (eg. a regulation has been revoked so why keep employing the enforcement arm for that regulation?).

President-elect Donald Trump has said he intends to cut government spending by reasserting the presidential power of impoundment, a move certain to spark a court battle and one that could redefine presidential power for decades to come. Impoundment occurs when the president chooses not to disburse funds authorized by Congress; instead leaving them unspent in the U.S. Treasury.This power is not mentioned in the Constitution but has been employed by presidents since Thomas Jefferson. Congress enacted limits on the practice 50 years ago.Now, Trump intends to challenge the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA), which he believes is unconstitutional.“I will...

Sources close to former President Trump say he has a plan for keeping Congress from ever again forcing him into “disgraceful” and “ridiculous” spending situations. If he returns to the White House, Trump will seek to resurrect authority that Congress stripped from the presidency almost a half century ago. What President Nixon squandered, his campaign promises, Trump will restore, namely the impoundment power. “A lot of you,” the former president told a New Hampshire crowd Thursday, “don't know what that is.” Indeed, few now remember it. Impoundment, if restored, would allow a president, in theory, to simply refuse to spend...

Biden's order gave federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security 60 days to come up with a plan to redirect border wall funds and to determine how much of the wall under construction should resume or be modified or terminated. That order expires Saturday, March 20. Forty U.S. Republican senators on Wednesday sent a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office Comptroller Gene L. Dodaro asking him for a legal opinion as to whether President Joe Biden's suspension of U.S.-Mexico border wall construction and a freeze on funding for those projects violates the Impoundment Control Act. The act prevents...

Plenty of Republicans remain bitter that their party passed that bloated $1.3 trillion omnibus—almost as bitter as President Trump, who felt pressured to sign it. But this fight doesn’t have to be over. Across Washington, principled conservatives are noodling with an idea that—if done right—could be a political winner. It’s a chance for Republicans to honor their promises of spending restraint and redeem themselves with a base turned off by the omnibus blowout. It’s an opening for the GOP to highlight the degree to which Democrats used the bill to hold the military hostage to their own domestic boondoggles. And...

An action taken by the president in which he or she proposes not to spend all or part of a sum of money appropriated by Congress. The current rules and procedures for impoundment were created by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (2 U.S.C.A. § 601 et seq.), which was passed to reform the congressional budget process and to resolve conflicts between Congress and President RICHARD M. NIXON concerning the power of the EXECUTIVE BRANCH to impound funds appropriated by Congress. Past presidents, beginning with THOMAS JEFFERSON, had impounded funds at various times for various reasons, without...