One of the first things I learnt in A Level politics is that the United States Congress has, and will always, retain the power of the purse. However, the incoming Trump administration has a view to stripping this power away.
A complex history on the world stage, the United States has often been dipped in and out of phases of isolationism. However, Trump and his entourage’s latest escapade against the US Agency for International Development has them pictured as the sleepy-eyed teenager shouting furiously down the stairs “It’s not a phase mom!”. Phase or not. Other agencies in the executive branch have been told to remain wide awake for the overhauls that Musk’s DOGE has in store for them, in what is bearing up to be the biggest bedroom-tidying of federal government in US history.
GOP Lawmakers have raised few objections to the plans to axe USAID and have mostly sat on their hands as Trump’s appointments, list of tariffs, and federal grant freezes have all been approved by the Republican Class of ’24. Democrats, however, have soured on Musk’s blitzkrieg through government agencies, with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) saying that the “American people, mark my words, the American people will not stand for an unelected secret group to run rampant in the executive branch.” Former economic adviser to conservative Republicans and now economic policy expert at the Manhattan Institute, Brian Reidl, has joined the Dems in condemning Musk’s anti-bureaucratic march through the Capitol as an “erosion of our democracy”.
Many senior Dems in Congress are prepared to go as far as shutting government down to prevent Musk from sending other agencies and departments to the same mass grave as USAID, and, supposedly, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On March 14 the stopgap spending authority enacted in December last year runs out, and Democrats are considering keeping government running and risking a debt default to halt the Trump administration’s culling efforts. A huge change of tact for what has almost always been known as the ‘party of government’. The most senior Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray (D-Wash) told Punchbowl News:
“Democrats are, as always, committed to responsibly funding the government, but it is extremely difficult to reach an agreement on toplines — much less full-year spending bills — when the president is illegally blocking vast chunks of approved funding, when he is trying to unilaterally shutter critical agencies, and when an unelected billionaire is empowered to force his way into our government’s central, highly-sensitive payments system [at the Treasury Department]. Democrats and Republicans alike must be able to trust that when a deal gets signed into law, it will be followed.”
Murray’s colleague on the House Appropriations Committee Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.) joined her counterpart in the Senate claiming that Trump’s cuts to federal funding, grants, and the axing of USAID hurts the United States’ standing on the global stage. Despite this gloomy outlook, however, the representative for Connecticut’s 3rd congressional district is still hopeful that a deal can be reached over the funding of government in FY2025, but only if such an agreement means that spending is done within the parameters set by Congress.
These parameters hang in the balance after the Senate Budget Committee’s advancement of Russell Vought’s nomination to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), parameters set by the Impoundment Control Act 1974. Vought – who lead the OMB in Trump’s last administration – was advanced by Senate Republicans 11-0 in Committee, a vote in which the Democrats abstained in opposition to Vought’s stance on the 1974 Act, and his views to curb Congress’ power of the purse.
The Impoundment Control Act prevents the President or other executive departments from re-appropriating Congress-approved funds for their purposes, which Vought believes to be unconstitutional.
So, with Republicans taking a backseat and Democrats waging war, the fight for the power of the purse is well and truly on. Will Congress’s power tumble down Capitol Hill?
