White House could break Congress with more recissions [View all]

By David A. Super / Los Angeles Times

Having prevailed in mid-July on party-line congressional votes to slash foreign assistance and zero-out public broadcasting, senior Trump administration officials immediately signaled intent to seek still more “rescissions” of money already appropriated for the current fiscal year.

Even more provocatively, they are discussing plans to engage in the cuts by flagrantly sidestepping Congress. All this comes against a backdrop of the administration’s quiet withholding or slow-walking of billions of dollars for programs ranging from Head Start to medical research.

This mad rush to defund public programs is deeply irresponsible. These programs serve real purposes that the administration has ignored in its haste to slash domestic spending. Comedians poked fun at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency when it had to scramble to rehire the fired workers who keep our nuclear weapons safe. This willful ignorance took a tragic turn when the National Weather Service’s Texas offices were left understaffed as catastrophic flooding and hurricane season approached. The Lancet medical journal published a study finding that the administration’s rapid-fire foreign aid cuts will lead to 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if they continue.

The White House defunding marathon is also illegal. President Nixon tried very much the same thing, withholding appropriated funds from programs he disliked. Every court that considered the merits of his impoundments found them unlawful, including a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court. The president can veto spending legislation he finds excessive, but he may not sign an appropriations act and then simply refuse to implement it or appropriations signed into law before his administration.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-white-house-could-break-congress-with-more-recissions/