Davin News Server

On 24 Jun 2024, kear <X@Y.com> posted some news:v5d2ns$16epv$2@dont-
email.me:

> the usa is a cesspool 

thanks to democrat faggots.

The media has breathlessly reported that former President Donald Trump 
plans to upend longstanding norms around the separation of powers, such as 
in coverage of Trump’s criticisms of the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), a 
1974 law that purports to restrict the president’s authority to save 
taxpayer money.

A recent Washington Post article and subsequent opinion piece claim that 
Trump’s plan to reinvigorate the practice of impoundment — intentionally 
not spending the full amount of a congressional appropriation — violates 
the Constitution and breaks with longstanding practice. This is not true.

Far from being a disturbing break with law and practice, Trump’s defense 
of the impoundment authority is deeply rooted in our constitutional 
system, good governance norms and American history and tradition. 
Presidents from both parties have criticized the ICA’s restrictions on the 
president’s ability to impound funds to reduce federal spending.
Impoundment is common sense — if it takes fewer resources to implement a 
program than what was appropriated, an agency should not be forced to 
waste taxpayer dollars. If there is room for savings in federal programs, 
why should the president be restrained from ordering agencies to shrink 
the size of the federal government?

Moreover, impoundment is a key tool for the president to pursue U.S. 
foreign policy and protect national security. If Congress appropriates 
foreign aid to a country or international organization, and it is later 
revealed that this country or organization is actively harming American 
interests, the president has inherent authority as commander in chief to 
impound those funds.

But under the ICA, it does not matter that everyone would agree that the 
president should not send those funds to a foreign adversary. The ICA does 
not contemplate that the president can unilaterally impound funds without 
going back to Congress to have a new law enacted to rescind such funds. 
This is an unconstitutional limitation on the president’s Article II 
authority and responsibilities.

In fact, far from being norm-breaking, Trump’s impoundments proposal is in 
line with centuries of bipartisan, cross-branch history and tradition. For 
example, in his first annual message to Congress, President Thomas 
Jefferson announced that his administration had “suspended or slackened … 
expenditures” for the construction of shipyards to allow the Congress to 
reassess these Federalist Era appropriations. Executive impoundments 
continued throughout the 19th century.

By the turn of the 20th century it was well understood, in the words of 
Attorney General Judson Harmon, that appropriations, even when using 
language such as “shall,” are not mandatory “to the extent that you are 
bound to expend the full amount if the work can be done for less.”

Congress also presumed that the president retained his constitutional 
impoundment authority. For example, Sen. John Sherman protested President 
Grover Cleveland’s decision to veto a rivers and harbors appropriations 
bill on the ground that the president could mitigate any pork barrel 
spending in the bill through his impoundment power: “If the President … 
should see proper to say, ‘That object of appropriation is not a wise one; 
I do not concur that the money ought to be expended,’ that is the end of 
it. There is no occasion for the veto power in a case of that kind.”

In one of many mid-century impoundments in Democratic administrations, 
President Harry S. Truman impounded hundreds of millions of dollars for 
the Air Force. Truman had requested 48 Air Force groups, but the House 
insisted on 58 groups. The president signed the bill, but only after 
announcing that he directed the secretary of Defense to place the extra 
$735 million for the 10 excess groups into reserve. As Truman put it, 
impoundment is within “the discretionary power of the President. If he 
doesn’t feel like the money should be spent, I don’t think he can be 
forced to spend it.” After holding hearings on the constitutionality of 
the president’s actions, legislators agreed that Truman had acted within 
his constitutional power.

This is just a brief sampling of presidential impoundments. One thing is 
clear: impoundment was the norm and within the unchallenged powers of the 
president until the Watergate Era.

The Impoundment Control Act was a radical break from longstanding 
constitutional understanding and norms. This legislation, passed during 
the depths of the Watergate scandal, purports to practically eliminate the 
president’s longstanding and constitutional power of impoundment. Not only 
is the ICA thus substantively unconstitutional because it conflicts with 
the president’s Article II impoundment power, Congress chose 
unconstitutional means to achieve the ICA’s unconstitutional ends.

The ICA relies on an unconstitutional mechanism for its enforcement. The 
law vests enforcement authority in the comptroller general, head of the 
Government Accountability Office. This arrangement is unconstitutional for 
several reasons. For one, the comptroller is appointed for a 15-year term 
and is removable only by Congress. For this reason, in Bowsher v. Synar, 
the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional for Congress to assign 
executive functions to the comptroller. Yet the ICA expressly tasks the 
comptroller with the executive function of enforcing the act’s provisions 
by audits and vests the comptroller with the right to sue the executive 
branch to force expenditure of appropriated funds.

Because the comptroller is removable only by Congress, he cannot exercise 
executive power, yet the ICA purports to give him this power. Moreover, 
the ICA vests the unaccountable comptroller with standardless discretion 
to determine what is and is not an impoundment, and on the basis of this 
determination, authorizes this presidential appointee to sue the 
president.

Both the ICA’s restrictions on presidential impoundment authority and its 
mechanism to enforce those restrictions flagrantly violate the 
Constitution. Trump is right to stand up against this norm-breaking and 
unconstitutional measure and to restore commonsense limitations on 
government spending.

Mark Paoletta served as general counsel of the Office of Management and 
Budget during the Trump administration. He is a senior fellow at the 
Center for Renewing America. Daniel Shapiro is a former law clerk to 
Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Neomi Rao.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/opinion-trump-is-right-about-the-
impoundment-control-act-it-s-unconstitutional/ar-BB1oODij