Latest / Best of: Features / Trump administration uses rare authority to claw back nearly $1B in spending approved by Congress

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Trump administration uses rare authority to claw back nearly $1B in spending approved by Congress · Best of: Features

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  Trump administration uses rare authority to claw back nearly one billion dollars
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  in spending approved by Congress. Written by Kevin Freaking and Jonathan J.
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  Cooper. This article is being read by an automated voice generated by
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  Everlett. Washington, the AP. President Donald Trump is canceling
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  nearly one billion dollars in spending approved by Congress, the White House
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  announced on Friday, using a rare and contested power to ax funding
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  for immigrant services and diversity focused initiatives. Trump's Office of Management and
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  Budget described the funding cut as focused on the most harmful government
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  spending. Most of the cuts are focused on health and human services
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  programs that serve refugees and unaccompanied minors accused of being in the
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  country illegally. The administration says the funds are no longer necessary because
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  illegal border crossings have diminished considerably. Also targeted for cuts were A
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  Department of Education program for migrant students, a Department of Justice office
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  focused on reducing racial tensions, a business development initiative for minority entrepreneurs.
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  Housing Counseling Services from the Housing and Urban Development Department and a
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  series of grants from the Health and Human Services Department that
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  the administration called outright harmful and blatantly ideological. A White
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  House press release, announcing the funding recessions, notes that some of the
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  organizations are led by people who worked in the administration of Democratic
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  President Barack Obama. Trump's move was condemned by Senator Susan Collins of
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  Maine, a Republican in a tough re election campaign and chair of
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  the Senate Appropriations Committee. Collins said in a statement that the action
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  came without warning or consultation. She also said she would work to
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  address with colleagues these illegal actions. Not only is the delay itself
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  an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is
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  a usurpation of Congress, appropriations powers, Collins said. OMB is an agency
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  of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs
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  are worth funding. Under federal law, Congress has forty five days to
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  review the President's proposed spending cuts before they take effect. But Trump
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  made that all but impossible by announcing them with just five days
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  left in the federal fiscal year and the House out of session
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  through the November election. The Government Accountability Office, which is an arm
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  of Congress, says the maneuver known as a pocket recession is illegal.
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  Collins called it the latest attempt by OMB to undermine Congress's constitutional
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  power of the purse. A year ago, Trump issued a pocket recession
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  for the first time in nearly fifty years by blocking four point
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  nine billion dollars in congressionally approved foreign aid. The U.S. Supreme Court
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  declined to block those recessions, saying that Trump's authority over foreign affairs
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  weighed heavily in its decision. This year, Trump is targeting domestic spending.
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  The use of a pocket rescion fits into a broader pattern by
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  the Trump administration to exert greater control over the US government, eroding
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  Congress's power. What was essentially the last pocket recession occurred in nineteen
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  seventy seven, when then Democratic President Jimmy Carter rescinded it, and the
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  Trump administration argues it's a legally permissible tool, despite some murkiness, since
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  Carter had initially proposed the clawback well ahead of the forty five
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  day deadline. The administration has also fired federal workers, imposed a historic
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  increase in tariffs, and started the war in Iran without going through
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  Congress, putting the burden on the judicial branch to determine the limits
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  of presidential power. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the lead Democrat on
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  the Senate Appropriations Committee, described the White House action as theft from
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  the American people, plain and simple. These are funds Congress has delivered
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  on a bipartisan basis and should be helping people, not cut off
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  by a president more focused on building a ballroom than investing in
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  families, Murray said. Murray said that in recent spending negotiations, Democrats fought
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  to include language to prevent the administration from usurping Congress's power on
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  spending decisions, but Republicans have declined to go along. While Trump spends
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  tax dollars on ads promoting himself, Congress needs to reassert its powers
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  to help people, and it's past time Republicans join us in that
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  fight, she said. In addition to immigrant services, the White House said
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  it was rescinding seventy million dollars for what it called woke international
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  education programs, twenty eight million dollars in grant funding for health and
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  human services research programs, and nine million dollars in debt relief for
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  foreign countries that fund climate change policies. Another ten million dollars was
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  being withheld from a minority business development program.