Donald Trump is having fun playing Democracy’s wrecking ball

January 29th, 2025 by Tom Lynch

Monday evening, the White House announced a halt to all payments of federal grants, loans, and other assistance to most programs nationwide. All funding was ordered to shut down at 5:00 pm Tuesday.

After the blizzard of Executive Orders in his first week on the job, this latest Trump action proved a hair-on-fire event for many Americans from coast to coast.

On Tuesday, the White House was forced to make clear that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Pell grants were among a few disbursements allowed to continue. Everything else must stop.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt briefed the press corps yesterday and maintained the directive complied with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and went further to say the White House Counsel said it was legal. Leavitt said Trump ordered the “pause” in order to make sure that all of the allocated funds were in compliance with “the President’s priorities.”

As we all know, there are three branches of government: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. The three are supposed to function as checks and balances on each other. At least, that was the way the Founders, especially James Madison, drew the play up on the board. Madison and the other Founders gave the power of the purse to Congress.

However, Donald Trump has managed to make both Houses of Congress his personal lap dogs, and now there is no check, there is no balance, and there probably won’t be until and unless Democrats take control of the House in the 2026 Midterms.

To come to some rational conclusion about whether Donald Trump is violating the law with his impoundment of funds, it might help to know what the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 actually says.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon did what Donald Trump is trying to do now, only in a much more targeted manner. After Nixon resigned in disgrace, Congress decided it needed to put guardrails up to prevent that sort of thing from happening again. To do that, it passed, and Gerald Ford signed, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The Act allowed the President to transmit a “special message” to both Houses of Congress asking that Congress permanently rescind or temporarily defer funds previously allocated through congressional action and presidential approval. Specifically, the Act says:

§683. Rescission of budget authority

(a) Transmittal of special message:

Whenever the President determines that all or part of any budget authority will not be required to carry out the full objectives or scope of programs for which it is provided or that such budget authority should be rescinded for fiscal policy or other reasons (including the termination of authorized projects or activities for which budget authority has been provided), or whenever all or part of budget authority provided for only one fiscal year is to be reserved from obligation for such fiscal year, the President shall transmit to both Houses of Congress a special message specifying—

1) the amount of budget authority which he proposes to be rescinded or which is to be so reserved;

(2) any account, department, or establishment of the Government to which such budget authority is available for obligation, and the specific project or governmental functions involved;

(3) the reasons why the budget authority should be rescinded or is to be so reserved;

(4) to the maximum extent practicable, the estimated fiscal, economic, and budgetary effect of the proposed rescission or of the reservation; and

(5) all facts, circumstances, and considerations relating to or bearing upon the proposed rescission or the reservation and the decision to effect the proposed rescission or the reservation, and to the maximum extent practicable, the estimated effect of the proposed rescission or the reservation upon the objects, purposes, and programs for which the budget authority is provided.

(b) Requirement to make available for obligation:

Any amount of budget authority proposed to be rescinded or that is to be reserved as set forth in such special message shall be made available for obligation unless, within the prescribed 45-day period, the Congress has completed action on a rescission bill rescinding all or part of the amount proposed to be rescinded or that is to be reserved. Funds made available for obligation under this procedure may not be proposed for rescission again.

The 45-day period in (b), above, is the time Congress has to agree or disagree with the President’s request for a “rescission.”

Further, the next section, §684, says that instead of requesting to rescind budgetary authority, the President may also propose instead “to defer any budget authority provided for a specific purpose or project…” In that case, his proposal must meet the same requirements as his rescission request.

The current “pause” in funds dispersal was not transmitted through a “special message” from the President to Congress. It was announced in a memo to the heads of Executive Departments and Agencies from  Matthew Vaeth, Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget, an office without any authority to do anything like this.

Five Blue states immediately sued the Administration to stop the impoundment, and late Tuesday, US District Judge Loren AliKhan, temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing the new directive. The Judge’s decision is good until next Monday when the two sides will make their cases in Judge AliKhan’s courtroom.

Trump could have used the Impoundment Act to get what he wanted quite legally. If he had simply requested that the House rescind or defer allocated funds he would have been following the law instead of kicking it aside. But that is not who or what Donald Trump is. He does not like to ask anyone for anything; he likes to just take it. In that regard, he is now testing everything and everyone to see just how far he can go before someone or something stops him. The allegedly co-equal branch of government, Congress, has yet to summon the spine to do anything like that.

Through the first nine days of Donald Trump’s second presidency, the Republican party has done the roll-over-and-play-dead act better than my four-footed companion, Lancelot the Wonder Dog, ever could.