The White House might leverage an obscure procedural tool to push through billions in spending cuts identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) without the help of Congress.
In June, the GOP-controlled House approved a $9.4 billion rescissions package to reduce wasteful spending, but Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins of Maine has signaled skepticism of the package. However, a little-known mechanism known as a “pocket rescission” could allow the administration to implement tens of billions in additional cuts outlined by DOGE, all without requiring explicit approval from Congress.
Under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA) of 1974, the president can request the rescission of funds that Congress previously appropriated, effectively freezing those funds while Congress is given 45 days to approve or reject the request. A pocket rescission is a rescission request made with less than 45 days left in the fiscal year, causing any unspent funds to automatically expire because most federal funds cannot carry over into the next fiscal year.
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, who held the same role under the first Trump administration, has long advocated for the use of a pocket rescission. He and proponents of the approach cite the precedent set in 1975 by then-President Gerald Ford, though it has not been attempted since then.
OMB floated the idea in 2018, according to The New York Times, but it ultimately did not materialize. That same year, a $15 billion rescissions package put forth by the Trump administration failed in the Senate.
“It’s a provision that has been rarely used, but it’s there,” Vought recently told Axios. “And we intend to use all of these tools. We want Congress to pass it where it’s necessary; we also have executive tools.”
OMB did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The pocket rescission is an attractive option for the administration and fiscal hawks, given concerns that the rescission requests might not receive enough support from moderate Republicans in Congress.
The situation applies to the pending rescission package, which must be approved by the Senate by July 18. The likelihood of the rescission request being approved diminishes significantly if Collins, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, does not advance the package for a floor vote.
Collins has specifically expressed opposition to the proposed $500 million in cuts to a global HIV/AIDS prevention program.
However, pursuing a pocket rescission presents its own challenges. In 2018, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent “watchdog” agency within the legislative branch, found that the ICA “does not permit the withholding of funds through their date of expiration.”
Collins described the procedural mechanism as “illegal” and contrary to “the will of Congress and the constitutional authority of Congress to appropriate funds” in an interview with Politico this week.
However, some observers note that such a prohibition is not explicitly stated in the ICA’s text, and Congress has not adopted the GAO’s recommendations to revise the law.
“[The GAO report] is not a bad piece of legal work, but it doesn’t strike me as a lockdown answer to the question. It essentially requires whoever is interpreting [the ICA] to read into the language a limitation that is not there, that Congress did not bother to put into the statute,” Jack Fitzhenry, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Center for Renewing America, a think tank founded by Vought, recently put forth a similar argument.
“Congress has the power to follow GAO’s recommendation, but in the last fifty years, it has not chosen to amend the ICA,” Wade Miller, a senior advisor at the organization, recently wrote. “ If the executive branch decides to use this process, the deployment of a rescission with fewer than forty-five days remaining in the fiscal year is a statutorily and constitutionally valid strategy.”
Nevertheless, Fitzhenry said that attempting to use a pocket rescission would likely face legal challenges.
“If the Trump administration ever attempts this, it will be greeted with skepticism from hostile pockets in Congress and potentially in courts, too,” said Fitzhenry. “This doesn’t mean their interpretation is wrong, but I think they’ll be fighting an uphill battle.”
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