Washington, D.C. — Former President Donald Trump and Russ Vought, a lead author of Project 2025 and director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the Trump administration, have a plan to unilaterally change most spending laws and upend checks and balances. A new Center for American Progress Action Fund issue brief exposes how Trump and Vought seemingly have a plan that would create a backdoor method to carry out parts of Project 2025 by ignoring the country’s spending laws. This plan would undermine checks and balances by overriding the will of Congress and transferring large amounts of power to the president, likely be corruptly abused by a potential future Trump administration, and destroy the congressional appropriations process.
Currently, laws are in place so that the president must faithfully carry out a spending bill once it has been enacted. Attempts to not carry out funding mandated in a newly enacted law would likely be illegal. However, Trump and Vought are arguing the president has inherent constitutional authority to ignore certain spending laws and are seemingly planning to use the impoundment process to let Trump single-handedly effectively rewrite these laws even after they are enacted.
This issue brief examines the dangers of allowing the president to have absolute control over spending laws and how it can be used as a backdoor way to implement Project 2025 and to cut funding to critical programs such as Head Start and Title I. The brief also discusses how this kind of power would destroy the congressional appropriations process and increase the likelihood of government shutdowns and dysfunction.
“Trump and Vought’s wrongheaded interpretation of impoundment authority would upend checks and balances on critical federal spending bills. This misguided interpretation could put funding of crucial programs in jeopardy, all because Trump doesn’t believe he should have to carry out laws he doesn’t like,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at CAP Action and author of the issue brief. “If you don’t like a law, try to change the law. The president doesn’t get to just ignore laws they don’t like.”
Read the issue brief: “How Trump and a Project 2025 Lead Author Are Trying To Undermine Checks and Balances Central to U.S. Governance” by Bobby Kogan
For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Sarah Nadeau at [email protected].