A congressional watchdog ruled Tuesday that President Trump cannot withhold over $800 million in spending approved by Congress, escalating the constitutional fight over whether an elected president or the permanent bureaucracy controls the purse strings.
The Government Accountability Office — an agency that works for Congress — sent its review to federal lawmakers and Vice President JD Vance, declaring Trump's so-called "pocket rescission" maneuver illegal. The move allowed Trump to axe funding for immigrant services and diversity initiatives by announcing the cuts with just five days left in the fiscal year, while the House sat in recess through the November election.
Under the Impoundment Control Act, the administration can withhold funds for 45 days while Congress considers a rescission request. If Congress doesn't act, the money must be released. Trump's timing made congressional action all but impossible — which is the entire point when the House has already gone home rather than do its job.
"Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress's constitutional power of the purse," wrote the GAO's general counsel. Notice the framing: subverting Congress's power is the scandal. Subverting the voters who sent Trump to cut this waste never gets a mention.
Most of the targeted cuts hit Health and Human Services programs serving refugees and unaccompanied minors in the country illegally. The administration says the funds are no longer necessary because border crossings have dropped considerably. Also in the crosshairs: diversity-focused initiatives — the kind of spending the uniparty funds reflexively and never audits.
This is Trump's second pocket rescission. A year ago, he blocked $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid — the first such maneuver in nearly 50 years. The Supreme Court declined to block that one, citing Trump's authority over foreign affairs. Now the fight shifts to domestic spending, where the stakes for ordinary Americans are direct.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune expects the courts to settle it: "Some of the proposed cuts are things that many of us agree with, but the process by which they did it is going to be, I assume, subject to a lot of discussion and probably some litigation." Translation: we agree the spending is waste, but we won't lift a finger to cut it ourselves, and we'll let judges sort out the procedure.
Rep. Brendan Boyle, ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, is sponsoring legislation to require the White House to release funds at least 90 days before expiration — effectively closing the pocket rescission door. "No president has the authority to ignore Congress and unilaterally cancel funding that was signed into law," Boyle said. The Chicago Tribune and Mercury News coverage both framed this as Trump eroding Congress's power. Neither asked why Congress keeps funding programs the public opposes, or why a president elected to drain the swamp should need permission from the swamp to do it.
The founders gave the power of the purse to the House because it was closest to the people. Today's Congress uses it to feed the bureaucracy and insulate itself from accountability. When both parties agree on spending, that's where the public gets sold out. The real constitutional question isn't whether Trump's maneuver is procedurally tidy — it's whether the people have any mechanism left to stop their money from being wasted.
