Congress And Trump Play Tug-Of-War Over The 'Power Of The Purse'

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Sarah McCammon.

I cover politics.

I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House.

And I'm Deirdre Walsh.

I cover Congress.

Today on the show, does Congress still have its power of the purse?

The House has left town for its summer break, but before they left, Congress passed a $9 billion rescissions package requested by the White House, which canceled funding that Congress had previously approved.

Tam and Deirdre, you've been taking a larger look at how both the Trump administration and Congress have been approaching government spending.

Now, the Constitution in Article 1 gives Congress this power, the power of the purse.

Tam, how does the Trump administration seem to view the role of Congress when it comes to spending?

The Trump Trump approach to spending is much like his approach to governing in the second term.

He is testing the limits of executive power, seeking wins for himself, and he's blowing past norms and established law.

And that includes everything from executive orders, Elon Musk's Doge project, brute political force.

He came into office and the slashing began.

But it's also really just taking this maximalist approach to executive power.

I want to kind of take a step back just to sort of walk through through how this normally works.

Deirdre, what is the traditional process that Congress is supposed to use to decide how the government spends money?

And how does the rescission that Congress just approved fit into that?

Right.

The process, how it's supposed to work is they pass 12 appropriations bills that lay out very specifically how various government programs are funded, how much money they get.

Do they put strings on spending?

These are all done in what's called appropriations bills.

It has been decades since Congress has passed all 12 appropriations bills.

What has become the norm on Capitol Hill is that Congress kicks the can.

They cannot get their act together to pass these appropriations bills, so they end up either stuffing everything into one giant bill called an omnibus, which everyone hates because it's like 3,000 pages and no one has time to read it, or what's become more the practice is that they pass what's called a continuing resolution.

We are now operating under a CR that was was passed with a bipartisan vote signed by the president in March.

The rescissions process is one that has very rarely been used and the one that just passed that clawed back $9 billion in money for foreign aid and public media.

clawed back programs that the president himself signed into law, approved in March.

That's pretty rare, but that process was set out by a law that Congress passed itself in the 70s around the Watergate era because they wanted to be able to still put their stamp in the event that the executive wanted to claw back some of this money.

So Russell Vogt is the budget director for the White House.

He served in the first Trump administration.

He's one of the authors of Project 2025.

And he just has a very different view than I think many in Congress have of what the role of the White House is, what the role of Congress is, and like how much the White House actually has to listen to what Congress tells them through spending bills.

He was at this breakfast put on by the Christian Science Monitor recently, and he said this.

It's a ceiling.

It is not a floor.

It is not the notion that you have to spend every last dollar of that.

200 years of presidents had the ability to spend less than appropriations and did.

Tim, what do you hear in that?

Well, I hear him saying that, yes, Congress, you can pass your spending bills, but we don't have to spend it.

We can do what we want to do.

And frankly, that's what they've been doing for the first six months of the Trump administration.

They have essentially shut down agencies,

maybe not fully, but functionally.

They have laid off tons of people.

They have stopped funding for various programs.

They have cut off funding for research and other things.

And they haven't done that with the blessing of Congress.

So, Judrey, on that point, some Republicans have pushed back on these efforts, obviously unsuccessfully, but they've pushed back on the White House's approach to spending, right?

What's motivating those who are pushing back to the extent that they are?

I think we should say there's a split among Republicans.

A lot are okay with cutting spending however you want, right?

A lot of them are like, fine, send us more rescissions packages that the White House decides how to cut spending.

A lot of them supported the Department of Government Efficiency or Doge effort.

Another strain of the Republican Party, especially Republicans on these spending panels, really

want to reassert their authority and say, we also want to cut spending, but we have the power of the purse and we want to decide how to do it.

They actually have talked about putting additional rescissions packages in a spending bill.

That actually happens fairly often.

I think we just...

It wasn't something that a lot of people talked about in this past debate, but there have been times that both parties have agreed to cancel out programs that they previously approved for whatever reason.

Trevor Burrus: Wait, so how would that work?

Is that sort of like a negotiating, a bargaining chip?

They'll say, we'll claw something back in a later bill.

Sometimes funds aren't spent.

Like sometimes programs don't work out.

It's a new priority and people have a different priority they want to spend.

You know, maybe there's a natural disaster and people from certain regions of the country want to shift money around.

This kind of thing, negotiations happen all the time, but it gets back to this sort of dysfunction inside Congress where they haven't been able to assert that power.

They haven't been able to pass these basic spending bills.

So when they kick the can, the latitude ends up with the executive branch because if it's just a continuing resolution, they're the ones that say like, oh, we're going to pull funding for this, that, and the other.

And then it becomes like an individual lobbying effort.

Some of these programs are out of line ideologically with the president or his administration and, you know, like may never never see the light of day, which is why you then have these Republican senators jumping in and saying, hey, wait,

we need that cancer research funding in our state, at our universities.

We need these after-school programs and summer school programs, and our states don't have another way to pay for this.

Right.

So even if Republicans philosophically, ideologically might say we want to cut.

spending, it's a different story when it's your

district.

Yeah, and to your question, Sarah, about Republicans pushing back, there have been rescissions bills that have passed

more than 30 years ago.

They were requests from the administration that went to the Hill and they were approved with bipartisan votes.

The process only needs a simple majority, but in the past these have been bipartisan.

The thing that I think has been different with this package, and even Republicans who voted for it, raised this as a red flag, is it didn't come with a lot of details.

It was like, cut this much money in foreign aid.

And they're like, wait, which maternal and child health program are you cutting?

Like, we need more details.

A couple said, we're not giving you a blank check.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, Maine Senator Susan Collins, who happens to chair the Appropriations Committee, said, no, I'm not cool with this.

I vote no.

Others say, it was $9 billion.

That's not really that much money in the grand scheme of federal spending.

So I'll trust you on this one.

But I think going forward, because we expect there will be another rescissions request, it'll be a key question for Senate Republicans who raise these concerns.

And a lot of Republicans raise concerns, but when the president says, I'm not going to endorse you if you don't vote for this bill, they tend to fall in line.

So will that happen again?

We've been talking about the Republicans, but I do want to talk about Democrats.

There are still Democrats in Congress.

How much power do they have here?

Well, I mean, the House of Representatives is narrowly controlled by Republicans, but we've seen them been able to pass bills, whatever the Trump administration requests.

But when it comes to the Senate, you need 60 votes to pass these spending bills.

So Democrats are key in deciding whether or not this process is going to move forward or not.

After the rescissions vote, which all Democrats opposed, there were pretty dire warnings from Democrats across the board saying, we worked with you to pass this deal in March that now you're reneging on.

Why would we cooperate with you going forward on this year's spending bills?

That increases the chances of a possible government shutdown if Democrats don't help pass some of these bills, even a stopgap bill to avoid a shutdown.

We should note that this week, the first package of spending bills did move forward.

The top Democrat in the

Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, said Democrats were voting for this one, at least to advance, because it undid some of the cuts that the White House and the Doge project did on veterans programs, and there was a bipartisan cooperation.

When we get to more controversial spending bills, that is going to be the test case as to whether or not Congress is going to be able to pass these spending bills later this fall and whether we're looking at a possible government shutdown.

All right, we're going to take a quick break.

We'll have more in just a moment.

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And we're back.

We've been talking about rescissions, the fact that it's the job of Congress to determine how spending works, and the fact that Congress gave itself the power, right, to pull back that spending.

Yes, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 created this thing called rescission, which requires if the president doesn't want to spend money, they need to come to Congress, say, hey, we want this rescission to take place.

And then Congress proactively has to approve it.

Now, only by 50 plus one in the Senate, but Congress has to take an action.

If Congress doesn't act, the president doesn't get the rescission he wants.

So a lot of people have seen what happened with this rescission as Congress abdicating its power of the purse once again.

But I think that might be the wrong read on it because this is actually what the law was designed for.

Now, there have been a lot of other funds put on hold and spending that didn't happen where the White House didn't ask Congress, and there are real questions about the congressional power there.

But in this one particular case, they are following the law.

This is the law Congress created for itself.

And how does what's happening now fit into other times that this power of rescission has been used in the past?

Aaron Powell,

what Republican senators told me is that in the past, when Congress has approved these types of requests, it's been on a bipartisan basis, and they've gotten a ton of detail.

Here are the specific cuts.

Here are the specific programs we're asking you to cut.

This time, it was a broader, here's some foreign aid programs.

Public media

caught back, and they were okay with doing it on this round, but have said basically, next time we want a lot more detail.

Aaron Powell, yeah, and I think that some of the brokenness that we have described might explain this, but there hasn't been a successful rescission since the 1990s.

President Trump and Russell Vogt tried it during the first Trump administration and it went nowhere.

And this one barely did pass.

So since the 1990s, we really have not seen this used.

And let's not forget, this whole process of appropriating money, you know, this money is for all kinds of government functions that affect people all over the country.

And I want to talk about that.

I mean, what does all of this mean for the people who vote for members of Congress,

you know, expecting them to advocate for them?

I think a lot of people expect their member of Congress to bring home the bacon, right?

If there's federal projects in their district, if there are, you know, VA facilities or hospitals or government offices, functions of the government, you know, farming,

social security offices, et cetera, that need funding, they expect their member of Congress to represent them and ask for that money, boost that money, maybe sometimes cut that money if they don't like whatever that thing is in their district.

When Congress isn't able to pass its regular spending bills, they essentially give up that power.

It's just sort of like punting at last year's program.

So it's much harder to get these special projects.

Another thing,

serving on the Appropriations Committee used to be a giant assignment that that members of Congress would spend years trying to get that seat because you could ask for what are called earmarks, like special projects, a million dollars, ten million dollars for a road in your district or water project in your district.

That practice has sort of been going away.

And more often than not, Republicans are looking to the administration and dialing up the Department of

Energy or the Department of Education or whatever and having to lobby for individual projects.

That's not the way it used to work.

And I will just say, one person's bacon is another person's pork.

And a lot of these members of Congress actually ran on reining in out-of-control government spending.

But they also, to Deirdre's point, are supposed to bring that bacon home.

And in a way,

it's a real tug.

I wonder if a rescission in some of these districts feels like not just not bringing home the bacon, but actually sending the pork back to the kitchen when it was already on the table.

All right, we're going to take a quick break.

And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

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And we're we're back.

It's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise.

And Deirdre, I'll start with you.

What can't you let go this week?

I can't let go of Venus Williams' return to the tennis tour at age 45.

I am a huge tennis fan.

I'm a huge fan of the Williams sisters.

They really changed the game of women's tennis, and Venus is sort of the OG.

She came back after 16 16 months of not playing a match here in Washington, played her first match and won.

And unfortunately, she lost last night, but it's been great to see her back on the court.

I mean, she's just an amazing player, fun to watch, and really energizes the enthusiasm around the game.

The other thing I can't let go of her return is one of the reasons she said she came back was for the health care.

She said she's been on Cobra for a really long time.

That stuff's expensive.

And she has long talked about her autoimmune issues and other health issues and says, I have to go to the doctor a lot.

I need health care.

And I like the health care.

So I can't wait for her to get better and play the next tournament.

And hopefully we will see her at the U.S.

Open.

Big week for Venus Williams.

Love Venus Williams.

What about you, Sarah?

What can't you let go of?

So what I can't let go actually comes from one of our member stations in Texas.

They've been doing this thing that I think is really cool and might actually be helpful to a lot of people.

We're going to hit the tape.

Welcome to Marfa Public Radio Puts You to Sleep, the podcast where we read boring documents we have to interface with in our jobs as radio professionals to lull you into a deep and peaceful slumber.

I love this.

First of all, Dendra and Tam, you don't know what that's about, do you?

Interfacing with boring documents for work.

Yeah, I just love this concept because, you know, this is like public service at its best from one of our member stations.

And they've been doing this for like a year and a half or something.

But what they did this week, you may recognize.

Amendment, section one, short title.

This act may be cited as the Rescissions Act of 2025.

Okay, I could not listen to this.

That would not be.

I unfortunately wasn't able to go to sleep during this process.

So I appreciate this public service, but I look forward to their next episode.

Because they debated it in the middle of the night.

You got no sleep.

I appreciate them finding the silver lining and everything that's been going on.

And I have to say, if the Resessions Act is not to your liking, there's a host of other options from Marfa Public Radio, including the Texas Administrative Code or the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.

So, in case you ever have trouble falling asleep.

At any rate, what can't you let go, Tam?

This is a lifelong thing that I can't let go of.

So, I, as longtime listeners of the podcast will know, have like a weird thing with Chuck E.

Cheese or Charles Entertainment Cheese, if you're into formality.

Oh, that's right.

That's his name.

So, the children's pizza joint, what happened is that a man at a Chuck E.

Cheese in Tallahassee, of course, Florida,

was arrested for alleged credit card fraud.

And when they went in to get the suspect, he was suited up as Chuck E.

Cheese.

So, there are photos taken by parents while their kids are banging whack-a-mole or whatever of this Chuck E.

Cheese being taken out in handcuffs.

That's going to give some kids some nightmares.

I think Chuck E.

Cheese gave me nightmares, but.

Yeah, I mean, I call him the pizza mouse.

He used to be the pizza rat, but then they changed it in 1993.

Anyway,

I just can't get enough of pictures of the pizza mouse in cuffs.

Yeah, that was probably not the day that the hosts of the birthday parties were hoping for.

It sounds like it was a rough day for many involved.

But, you know, I think most parents who've been through raising young children have probably spent some time at Chuck E.

Cheese.

and you know, you never know what's going to happen.

All right, that's a wrap for today.

Our executive producer is Mathoni Maturi, our editor is Rachel Bay, our producer is Brea Suggs.

Thanks to Kelsey Snell, I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover politics.

I'm Tamar Keith, I cover the White House, and I'm Deirdre Walsh, I cover Congress.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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