Article I puts federal spending in Congress’s hands. No money may be drawn from the Treasury without an appropriation made by law. Congress writes the spending law. The executive branch carries it out.
On September 25, Donald Trump announced that he would cancel $810 million Congress had already appropriated. The request arrived five days before the fiscal year ended, while the House was out through the November election. That timing all but guaranteed the money would expire before Congress could use the review period the law provides.
Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought are calling this a “pocket rescission.” That name makes the maneuver sound routine. They withheld money Congress ordered them to spend, waited out the clock, then filed paperwork too late for Congress to stop the cancellation. Vought turned a deadline into a veto.
The cuts land on Trump’s usual targets
Of the $810 million, $567 million came from programs serving refugees and unaccompanied children. The package also cuts roughly $25 million from education programs for migrant students, $15 million from the Justice Department office that works to reduce racial tensions, and $10 million from the Minority Business Development Agency. The Associated Press reported that housing counseling and Health and Human Services research grants were also targeted.
The White House does not even pretend this is dry budget management. Its own announcement describes grant recipients through their supposed ties to Obama officials and calls some of the research “blatantly ideological.” It reads like campaign opposition research with dollar signs attached.
Refugees, migrant students, and minority business owners lose services because Vought decided their appropriations should expire. Congress voted. Trump signed the underlying spending laws. OMB substituted its politics for the law anyway.
The law gives Congress forty five days
Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 after Richard Nixon used impoundment to pursue his own policy goals. Under the law, a president may ask Congress to cancel appropriated money. Congress then gets 45 days to approve the request. Without approval, the executive branch must make the funds available.
A pocket rescission exploits the expiration date instead of winning that vote. The request arrives so late that the money disappears before the 45 days run. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’s nonpartisan watchdog, says the maneuver is illegal. Its 2018 legal analysis found that the Impoundment Control Act does not let a president withhold money through its expiration date. Asked whether pocket rescissions are legal, GAO’s answer is simply: “No.”
Law professor Zachary Price told TIME that using the statute this way is “perverse.” The law was written to restrain presidential impoundment. Vought is treating it as permission to accomplish the same thing on a schedule.
Susan Collins, the Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said OMB had “intentionally withheld these funds for months” to execute the cancellation. She also called the delay itself an unreported impoundment and a usurpation of Congress’s authority. Her conclusion was exact: OMB does not get to decide which programs deserve funding.
The White House labels the money “excess” only after OMB spends months refusing to release it. Vought first creates the leftovers, then cites them to justify the refusal that created them.
Vought is expanding the tactic
Trump used the same maneuver in August 2025 to block $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid. The Supreme Court allowed the money to remain withheld while litigation continued. Less than 13 months later, the administration used the tactic again.
The Court did not rule that pocket rescissions are legal. The Associated Press reported that the stay gave heavy weight to the president’s foreign affairs authority and that this year’s package reaches domestic spending. That rationale does not settle this dispute.
Vought has now expanded the tactic from foreign aid to services inside the United States. If courts and Congress let this second use stand, any appropriation a president dislikes can become vulnerable near the end of a fiscal year. Congress can negotiate and pass a spending law. OMB can still make the result vanish by waiting.
Senator Patty Murray called the move “theft from the American people”. The theft is procedural, but its victims are real. A service that loses its appropriation is not comforted by the cleverness of the calendar.
The rescission defense collapses on the clock
The White House says the Impoundment Control Act authorizes the president to propose rescissions. It argues that falling border crossings left excess money. The administration also points to Jimmy Carter’s 1977 rescission, while supporters say Congress can appropriate the funds again next year.
None of that answers the timing problem. Carter submitted his request well before Congress’s 45 days had elapsed. The Supreme Court’s 2025 stay did not decide whether the maneuver was legal. Collins and House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro say the administration withheld the money for months, which means the supposed excess was manufactured by the impoundment. Telling Congress to appropriate the same money again concedes the abuse. A legislature should not have to pass a law twice to get a president to obey it once.
The constitutional problem is familiar. In 1998, the Supreme Court struck down the federal line item veto because the president cannot cancel part of a law after it has passed both chambers and taken effect. A pocket rescission seeks the same practical result by making sure Congress has no meaningful chance to answer the request.
Congress let the deadline win
The fiscal year ended on September 30, and the House was already out through the election. The review period of 45 days existed on paper and nowhere else.
Collins says she will work with colleagues to address the illegal action. Murray says Democrats tried to add language preventing this abuse to recent spending bills, but Republicans refused. Those statements came after OMB had already arranged for the funds to expire.
The Impoundment Control Act was supposed to stop presidents from refusing to spend money Congress had appropriated. Vought turned its review period into a weapon against the law itself. If Congress lets that stand, the power of the purse still belongs to Congress in the Constitution. In practice, it belongs to whoever controls the calendar.