President Donald Trump sent Congress a memo Tuesday night asking lawmakers to sign off on his administration’s demand for roughly $9.4 billion in immediate spending cuts. If Congress passes that rescissions package, funding to NPR, PBS and a slew of foreign aid programs would be officially slashed. If this idea sounds familiar, it’s because Trump is asking Congress to take back money for programs that he and Elon Musk have illegally refused to spend.
The request is a nod to the way things are supposed to work under the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, a law that makes it clear that the president has no authority to unilaterally withhold, or “impound,” money the legislature has appropriated. Thus, the request itself is a tacit admission from the Trump administration that its refusal to spend money Congress has appropriated is against the law.
The request itself is a tacit admission from the Trump administration that its refusal to spend money Congress has appropriated is against the law.
If an administration doesn’t want to spend money that has been budgeted, a 1974 law requires the White House to submit what boils down to a request for Congress to take its money back. Only after both chambers approve would the budget authority granted to specific departments and agencies be rescinded. Congress now has 45 days to pass the package before it expires and the administration is once again legally required to spend that money.
In the memo passed on to Congress, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought laid out 22 specific cuts to be made. The largest single item in Vought’s request would fully eliminate $1.07 billion allocated over the next two fiscal years to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB, as those of us who grew up watching “Sesame Street” know, is the biggest source of funding for many PBS stations. Trump signed an executive order to slash the CPB’s funding last month, but NPR and PBS have called the order unconstitutional and sued to have it overturned.
But the bulk of the requested cuts are focused on drawing down funding to various international projects the Trump administration has decided “do not align with an America First foreign policy agenda.” They apparently include such controversial concepts as promoting democracy ($83 million rescinded from the Democracy Fund), helping children ($437 million in contributions to UNICEF and other United Nations programs terminated), fighting HIV/AIDS ($400 million cut from programs like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR), and saving lives after natural disasters ($496 million withdrawn from the International Disaster Assistance account).
Among the smaller but pettier cuts requested is $125 million of the U.S. Agency of International Development’s operating budget. It has been months since the Department of Government Oversight de facto shuttered USAID, which Musk famously boasted had been fed “into the woodchipper,” with most of its contracts illegally cut and its employees fired. Many of those laid-off employees are also suing the administration for circumventing Congress in trying to shut down an agency Congress established by law.
As with many things budget-related, several things are true at once here. On the one hand, the money that would be clawed back would undoubtedly have major, catastrophic impacts on the work it’s funding. On the other, the $9 billion package is a drop in the bucket compared to the $2 trillion in savings that Musk originally promised to find with DOGE and a drop in the ocean compared to the annual $6.8 trillion federal budget.
Getting the package through Congress would require only Republican votes, but that doesn’t mean it will succeed. There has historically been little appetite from Congress for rescission requests; many lawmakers are aware of the political risk that comes with publicly voting to cut specific programs, especially popular ones. As Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, recently noted to reporters, “there hasn’t been a successful rescission package in many, many years.” Vought has a backup plan: keep breaking the law. But Musk has been unhappy with the lack of enthusiasm from Congress for codifying DOGE’s cuts. The Tesla CEO, who just left his quasi-official government role, slammed the House’s megabill as a “pork-filled … abomination.” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he called Musk to talk to him about the bill but got no answer. Even if congressional Republicans balk at the relatively small package, Vought has a backup plan: keep breaking the law. The OMB director recently appeared on CNN not only to say this was “the first of many rescission bills,” but also to insist that impoundment remains on the table. He also echoed a truly absurd claim from his former think tank that as long as you illegally withhold money within the 45-day window before a fiscal year ends, you can do an end-run around Congress. To repeat, in presenting congressional Republicans with the chance to place a veneer of legality on DOGE’s actions, the White House is tacitly admitting that the power of the purse still lies in Congress’ hands. But Vought’s attitude makes it clear this is a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition. If Congress doesn’t go along with its rescission package, the Trump administration will simply continue to do as it has done and usurp the power of appropriation for itself. The sad thing is there are surely plenty of GOP lawmakers who, to avoid risking difficult votes, are willing to surrender their awesome power.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW Daily. 
