The White House has informed Congress it intends to cancel $4.9 billion that lawmakers approved for foreign aid programs, invoking a little-known and legally untested power to slash spending without their approval.
The 15-page notification, sent to Congress on Thursday night and reviewed by The New York Times, is the administration’s first effort to push through what is known as a “pocket rescission.” It is an effort to unilaterally claw back money that has already been appropriated by waiting so late in the fiscal year to make the request that lawmakers do not have time to reject it before the funding expires.
The fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, before the 45-day period in which Congress is required to consider a rescission request from the White House. Republicans could bring the matter to a vote sooner, but party leaders have shown little appetite for resisting the president’s spending demands and asserting their own spending prerogatives.
The move, the latest chapter in an intensive fight between Mr. Trump and Congress over spending powers, drew swift condemnation from the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, who called it illegal.
“Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Friday.
“Given that this package was sent to Congress very close to the end of the fiscal year when the funds are scheduled to expire, this is an apparent attempt to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval,” Ms. Collins said.
The maneuver could further complicate lawmakers’ attempts to cobble together a bipartisan funding package to ensure the government does not shut down on Oct. 1. Any spending compromise must win Democratic support in the Senate to pass, and Democrats have said they would be loath to lend their votes to such a package if the White House continued unilaterally cutting congressionally approved funding.
The request largely targets accounts funding the United States’ contributions to the United Nations and soft power programs run by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has already largely been dismantled by the Trump administration.
The single biggest clawback would be a $445 million cut to U.S. funding of peacekeeping operations abroad, including through the United Nations. The request also proposes a $132-million rescission of the $140 million approved by Congress for the Democracy Fund at the State Department. The White House’s proposed budget released earlier this year suggested eliminating that program entirely.
Like the rescissions package sent to Congress that Republicans approved earlier this year, the White House did not single out specific programs for cuts.
The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan oversight body that reports to Capitol Hill, ruled during the first Trump administration that pocket rescissions are illegal. But Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, has made the case that the executive branch has broad discretion to use them.
The proposal also infuriated Democrats. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking member on the appropriations panel, said that lawmakers could not “accept this absurd, illegal ploy to steal their constitutional power to determine how taxpayer dollars get spent.”
And Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, suggested that the request was “further proof President Trump and Congressional Republicans are hellbent on rejecting bipartisanship and ‘going it alone’ this fall.”
“Republicans don’t have to be a rubber stamp for this carnage,” Mr. Schumer said. “Democrats stand ready to work with anyone to help American families, lower health care costs and secure our communities. But if Republicans are insistent on going it alone, Democrats won’t be party to their destruction.”
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
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