The Trump administration sent a package of spending cuts to the House totaling $9.3 billion from money that has already been appropriated. Under the 1974 Impoundment Act, a president can ask Congress to return the money to the Treasury in a process known as “rescission.”
This rescission, based on cuts to programs suggested by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), targets $8.3 billion of the budget for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). NPR and PBS would also lose federal funding, as would the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
DOGE claims it has saved taxpayers $160 billion by canceling contracts, eliminating agencies, firing employees, and achieving other savings. But DOGE has no statutory authority to cut anything, especially funds that have already been appropriated by Congress and signed by a president. Those 2025 suggested rescissions will have to be codified by the House and the Senate.
The good thing is that the votes in both the House and Senate will be straight-up majority votes.
Many of the cuts suggested by DOGE are working their way through the courts, but if Congress approves the package of cuts sent in a package of rescissions, it will be nearly impossible for the courts to overturn it.
This is the first in a series of rescission packages that the White House will send to the Hill, according to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russ Vought.
“We are certainly willing and able to send up additional packages if the congressional will is there,” Vought told reporters.
The problem in the past has been that congressional will has been lacking. “Between 1974 and 2000, presidents requested $76 billion worth of rescissions and Congress approved $25 billion,” reports the Associated Press.
The White House will have until the end of the fiscal year in September to claw back monies that have been targeted by DOGE and already appropriated for 2025.
Nine billion dollars in savings will not make a dent in the nearly $2 trillion federal deficit projected for this fiscal year, which began on October 1.
The request to Congress is unlikely to meaningfully change the troublesome increase in the U.S. national debt. Tax revenues have been insufficient to cover the growing costs of Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the government is on track to spend roughly $7 trillion this year, with the rescission request equaling just 0.1% of that total.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing that Vought — a “well-respected fiscal hawk,” she called him — would continue to cut spending, hinting that there could be additional efforts to return funds.
“He has tools at his disposal to produce even more savings,” Leavitt said.
It took more than 65 years of deficit spending to get us in the mess we’re currently in. We’re not going to solve our fiscal problems in one year of cuts. Eliminating USAID and other stupid, wasteful spending is a drop in the bucket. Solving our entitlement problem in the next 5-10 years is critical if we are to avoid a financial meltdown that would make 2008 look like a picnic in Grant Park.
This is a generational problem, both literally and figuratively. There aren’t enough young people paying into retirement benefits like Social Security and Medicare to keep them fully funded without raising taxes to ruinous (unfair?) levels.
Eliminating the massive waste in both those programs (estimated by some to be more than $100 billion of the $830 billion Medicare bill) would be an excellent start. But more needs to be done as our population continues to age out and people live longer.
The $9.3 billion in rescissions is symbolic. It’s a statement by Congress that the times are changing and the idiotic, wasteful spending is going to be addressed.
There’s a long way to go.
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