Imagine if you received$ 50 million to build a tank for only$ 32 million in the right way. You would be commended for accomplishing the task on time in the real world. You might even get a campaign. In Washington, D. C., you are violating the law according to many.
If the president intentionally tries to spend less money than Congress authorizes, he is breaking the law, as interpreted by many in Congress and the Government Accountability Office ( GAO ).
President Donald Trump was partially impeached by the Democratic-controlled House in part because he paused the$ 200 million in funding for Ukraine for 60 days in order to do a policy review based on concerns about national protection in the Democrat-controlled House. ( Disclosure: Mark Paoletta was OMB’s general counsel and gave the legal opinion approving this pause for these funds. ) Because the senator was prohibited from pausing this wealth despite these concerns, the GAO determined that this 60-day delay was in violation of the ICA. This delay was used by Congress as a justification for the president’s impeachment. You could n’t imagine a more bizarre and unconstitutional attack on the president.
Absurd Appropriation Law
The ICA, which was passed in 1974, made it illegal for the leader to spend every penny that Congress authorized, regardless of whether he needed to use all the finances. This law contradicted 200 years of history, which saw both Congress and the president agree that he was n’t required to spend every penny spent on a system if he could take it out for less money or, in many cases, if he disagreed with the program itself.
Appropriation rules were usually meant as a sky, not a surface. The British Parliament used the power of the bag to make it unlawful for the prince to face responsibilities that were beyond the budgetary constraints, tracing back to our English predecessors. Nobody wants to leave debts that they ca n’t pay. Parliament was concerned that the prince would spend more money than he had been given, no less.
In our new nation, this was the situation, and there are numerous instances of president not spending all the money that was allocated. The most well-known early pond precedent was set in 1803 when President Jefferson seized a$ 50,000 congressional appropriation for 15 navies for use on the Mississippi. The pond was solely on policy premises: Jefferson did not want to incite France during the covert negotiations over New Orleans ‘ acces and the order of the Louisiana Territory. When the purchase was completed, Jefferson spent the money.
In 1809, President James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, announced to Congress that he was reducing the crew of navies in New Orleans to save money that Congress had appropriated. Madison cited his policy decision that crew and ship maintenance may be decreased to promote both” only protection” and” just protection.” Adison clearly felt no guilt about bringing this matter before Congress, and the latter had no record of its objections.
President rebuked them when Congress began enforcing a more direct control to spend money on certain projects in regulations. For instance, President Grant sent a particular message to Congress declaring that he would not spend money on purely local assignments when Congress passed the River and Harbors Bill of 1876. This bill was specifically intended to fund various local tasks. In fact, he commanded the secretary of war to refrain from spending more than half of the$ 5 million designated for internal improvements.
The secretary of war responded that appropriations were “in no way necessary” and that it would not be lawfully suitable for Congress to restrict the president’s discretion to confiscate funds in” the interests of the public service” and” the condition of the Treasury” when Congress passed a resolution asking for the president’s legal authority to do so.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made numerous policy restrictions before and during the Second World War, including refusing to spend more than$ 500 million on public works projects. According to FDR, mandating total expenditure “would get away from the Chief Executive every reward for good administration and the practice of logical economy.” Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson made extensive use of the pond authority on performance and policy grounds, even in the face of congressional directives to devote the funds.
Because the B-70 strategic bomber had half the budget requested, President Kennedy impounded the other half of the$ 360 million resources. An angry Rep. Carl Vinson advanced policy providing that” the Secretary of the Air Force, as an official of the professional tree, is directed, ordered, mandated, and required to utilize the entire amount of the$ 491 million power granted” for the B- 70 fighter.
President Kennedy strongly rebuffed Vinson’s try to intrude upon his professional power, requesting that the language become changed from “directed” to “authorized” and that such language is “more evidently in line with the spirit of the Constitution”. Only a small number of presidential impoundments have existed in the history of our country.
With the passage of the ICA, Congress reversed this strong tradition and presidential impoundments by creating a minimum spending cap rather than a cap. How did we arrive at the point where the ICA discredits one of our most fundamental and logical constitutional theories?
In light of the battles over the Vietnam War and Watergate, the executive was seriously weakened, and Congress moved to further weaken the presidency. Congress passed the ICA in June 1974 as President Nixon was in the throes of the Watergate scandal’s demise. Nixon signed it into law on July 12, 1974. He left less than a month later.
It was unhelpful that, completely disregarding the numerous examples that date back to the beginning of our republic, then-Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist issued a legal opinion in 1969 that claimed the president did not have impoundment powers. Rehnquist did that again when, as chief justice, he authored one of the worst opinions in modern times on the separation of powers, Morrison v. Olson, which allowed federal judges to appoint prosecutors.
Reckless abandonment: appeasing special interests with special interests
The ICA has stifled Congress’s use of funds to acquiesce to special interests without resort and thwart the president’s exercise of his constitutional authority. It is not just ahistorical and unconstitutional. The president’s decision-making authority is unconstitutionally impeded by the ICA, which prohibits him from investing money in programs with thought and responsibility.
The president would be violating the International Criminal Court if Congress appropriated funds to pay$ 100 million in foreign aid to a foreign country if it was discovered that the foreign country had funded a terrorist attack on the United States. The ICA does not take into account presidential decision-making or his own judgment as the chief executive or commander in chief.  ,
Although the president has the authority to rescission if he does not want to use these funds, this cumbersome mechanism necessitates the passage of a new law to rescind appropriated funds, which is unlikely given congressional dysfunction and constitutionally unnecessary given the president’s long-known impoundment authority.
In accordance with every president from Washington to the ICA’s enactment, President Trump should immediately use his constitutional authority to impound funds based on efficiency and targeted constitutionally based policy grounds. Such actions will help stop mindless spending from raising our debt to unsustainable levels and stop funding programs that do n’t work. The Impoundment Control Act’s challenge is a worthwhile part of the larger effort to restore constitutional executive powers that Congress has monopolized for the past few decades.
During the Trump Administration, Mark Paoletta was the Office of Management & Budget’s general counsel. The Center for Renewing America employs him as a senior fellow. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of current or former employers because Daniel Shapiro worked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Neomi Rao.
