WASHINGTON — Prominent members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are pushing back against President Donald Trump after he abruptly canceled nearly $5 billion in foreign aid on Thursday night — heightening the risk of a government shutdown next month.
The Office of Management and Budget announced on Friday that Trump approved a $4.9 billion cut in foreign aid programs the night before through a process called pocket rescissions, a rarely used and legally questionable procedure that allows the president to cancel government funding without congressional approval. The process allows Trump to circumvent lawmakers because the request comes so close to the end of the fiscal year, which is scheduled to end on Oct. 1.
“For the first time in nearly 50 years, the President is using his authority under the Impoundment Control Act to deploy a pocket rescission, cancelling $4.9 billion in woke and weaponized foreign aid money that violates the President’s America First priorities,” an OMB spokesperson told the Deseret News in a statement.
The rescissions package includes $3.2 billion in cuts to the United States Agency for International Development, $322 million from the USAID-State Department Democracy Fund, $521 million in State Department contributions to international groups, $393 million in State Department contributions to peacekeeping activities and another $445 million in separately budgeted peacekeeping aid, according to the New York Post, which was the first to report the request.
Congress can vote to either rescind or continue the funds, the spokesperson said, but ultimately “it doesn’t matter.” The White House can withhold funding unilaterally for 45 days, which would extend past the government spending deadline anyway — meaning Trump can cancel the funds regardless of what Congress does.
The surprise decision angered lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who called the decision “unlawful and not permitted by the Impoundment Control Act.”
“Article I of the Constitution makes clear that Congress has the responsibility for the power of the purse,” Collins, the top lawmaker on the Senate Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement. “Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.”
A spokesperson for OMB pushed back on that assessment, arguing the Impoundment Control Act allows the president to “permanently cancel” funds previously approved by Congress — noting that while it is rare to use a pocket rescissions, it is a “lawful tool available to the executive branch to reduce unnecessary spending.”
The move has also heightened the risk of a shutdown at the end of September as Democrats have repeatedly warned they would not engage in bipartisan negotiations to fund the government if Trump continued his efforts to claw back funds after they were approved by Congress.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., decried the rescissions package as “further proof President Trump and congressional Republicans are hellbent on rejecting bipartisanship and ‘going it alone’ this fall.”
“If Republicans are insistent on going it alone, Democrats won’t be party to their destruction,” Schumer said in a statement.
Congress must approve funding for government agencies by midnight on Oct. 1, otherwise a temporary shutdown will take place and current funding will lapse. It will require bipartisan legislation to keep the government open as seven Democrats will need to side with their Republican colleagues in the Senate to pass a bill.