Restore sanity to a broken budget
Conservatives unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s spending levels should have shown a bit of patience. Instead of accomplishing everything in that 1,000-page bill, the administration intends to wield a fiscal scalpel to restore sanity to our broken federal budget.
This week, the White House is sending Congress a formal list of $9.4 billion in wasteful foreign aid projects in what is known as a rescissions package. Audits by the Department of Government Efficiency identified these indefensible expenditures within the budgets of the U.S. Agency for International Development, National Public Radio and related agencies.
Each rescissions package will roll a set of DOGE findings into a simple, bite-sized bill that will spotlight scams such as the $11 million in funding for producing the Middle Eastern version of “Sesame Street” in Iraq. It should be easier to cancel pointless expenditures when they are not concealed under $7.3 trillion worth of other funding priorities.
This will be a test of political resolve. “We want to see how this first bill does, whether it’s actually passed,” Office of Management and Budget chief Russ Vought explained Sunday on CNN. “It’s the first of many rescissions bills.”
Once the White House formally notifies lawmakers that the president doesn’t want to spend money they have appropriated, this special budgetary process triggers expedited procedures. So, the cuts will clear the Senate with only 50 votes, which will likely be crucial to success.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, a $15 billion rescissions bill passed the House on a party-line vote, only to fall short by two votes in the upper chamber. The Republican defectors were Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Susan M. Collins of Maine. Mr. Burr has retired, and, this time, the Republicans can afford to lose Ms. Collins and two other Republicans.
If Republicans stand together, even far-left federal judges will be powerless to revive spending killed through this process. That’s why House Speaker Mike Johnson is enthusiastic, promising to “act quickly by passing legislation to codify the cuts.”
Mr. Vought makes no assumptions about the outcome. He has already prepared contingency plans if rank-and-file lawmakers prove uncooperative. Mr. Vought has been itching for a legal fight to recover the executive’s traditional power to “impound” money allocated by Congress.
Every president refused to waste appropriated funds until 1974, when Democrats took advantage of the Watergate scandal to pass the Impoundment Control Act. That law stops presidents from eliminating bogus expenditures on their own authority.
Donald Trump’s team argues that the congressional power of the purse means the executive cannot spend a dime that Congress hasn’t approved. It doesn’t mean the president must spend every dime allocated. The administration is ready for the district court judges who will immediately block this impoundment revival.
“The very Impoundment Control Act itself allows for a procedure called ‘pocket rescissions’ later in the year to be able to bank some of these savings without the bill actually being passed,” Mr. Vought explained. “It’s a provision that has been rarely used, but it’s there, and we intend to use all of these tools.”
It’s easy to blame politicians for their eagerness to endorse waste and fraud, but that’s a simplistic take. Until the public stops reelecting members of Congress who bring home the bacon, they will do what their constituents reward them for doing.
Mr. Trump’s novel approach might provide a fix for this broken system.
— The Washington Times