#impoundment control act

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Despite the hype, DOGE hasn't found a shred of fraud

All they've really got is "spending that Elon Musk doesn't like."

Justin Glawe at Public Notice:

A month into Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s much-hyped efforts to root out fraudulent and wasteful spending by government agencies, not a single instance of fraud or waste has been discovered.

Instead, DOGE has dismantled federal agencies and halted or cancelled programs that Trump and Republicans simply disagree with, amid efforts to purge agencies of employees not loyal to Trump. Along with Trump’s firing of 17 inspectors general whose responsibilities ironically include finding waste, fraud, and corruption in government agencies, DOGE may be making the government less efficient, in just one instance by firing employees like Department of Transportation economists who performed cost-benefit analysis of infrastructure projects. Elsewhere, DOGE has fired FAA lawyers who help to keep drunk pilots out of the sky, Rolling Stone reports. And national parks are now understaffed thanks to the chainsaw DOGE is taking to the government. With nothing to show for its efforts to find actual fraud, it has become clear that DOGE is simply a way for Trump and Musk to arbitrarily cancel programs they don’t like in lieu of having to negotiate with Congress on spending priorities and government policies. This is likely a violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. But it’s more than that: DOGE is now the enforcement arm of a Trump administration that has no interest in working with Congress to implement its policy priorities.

DOGE has claimed it’s rooted out $55 billion worth of spending, a dollar amount that appears to be wildly inaccurate: As of Sunday, DOGE’s website claims it has saved or cancelled $55 billion worth of government contracts. But that same website only accounts for $16 billion in contracts. Half of that comes from an $8 million government contract that DOGE incorrectly identified as being worth $8 billion. Additionally, DOGE has been in some cases simply cancelling contracts that the government has already paid for. Some $325 million in supposed savings are simply contracts that have been repeated in DOGE’s reporting, Politico found. But actual fraud? DOGE has found nothing. None of this has stopped Trump, Musk, congressional Republicans, and their allies in rightwing media from breathlessly highlighting millions of dollars’ worth of spending as examples of fraudulent government programs. Nowhere in those lists of programs — like the USAID initiatives that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has been lambasting for weeks, including the tortured and incorrect claim that US taxpayers funded “condoms for Gaza” — is anything that even Musk or Trump themselves have identified as “fraud.” Instead, the goalposts for DOGE have silently moved from finding fraud and corruption to simply pointing out and cancelling government programs that Trump and Republicans simply don’t support. Reflecting this mission creep, Sean Hannity has begun referring to the programs and agencies targeted by DOGE as being guilty of “wrongful spending.”

Still, Trump insists that DOGE is finding actual fraud, despite no evidence of having done so.

Elon Musk's so-called DOGE hasn't found a lick of shred of actual fraud, as Musk/Trump have twisted the word "fraud" to mean funding that don't align with the Co-Presidency's agenda.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A government shutdown could be coming on March 14— and DOGE is a key factor

Democrats say the Trump administration's moves to reshape the federal government without congressional input make reaching a deal nearly imp

In a matter of weeks, the United States federal government could shut down for the first time in five years — with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency being a key reason.

Republicans now control the White House, the Senate, and the House. Government funding has historically been a bipartisan affair, with Democrats supplying the majority of votes for every funding bill that passed the GOP-controlled House in the last two years. That's required both sides to come together on bills that, while not completely satisfactory to either side, are acceptable enough that both parties can tolerate them.

Democrats increasingly say that President Donald Trump's moves to reshape the federal government without congressional input, including the DOGE-led slashing of USAID and the short-lived federal grant freeze, make it nearly impossible to reach a deal, unless it stops.

"We shouldn't give them a single damn vote until we have demands met," Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told Business Insider. "If they want to pass massive cuts at these agencies, they're going to have to do it on their own."

"Things are going to have to change," Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts told BI. "This DOGE bullshit has to end, and the president has to respect our branch of government."

It's not just that Democrats disagree with what Trump and Republicans are doing, which is to be expected. It's that the Trump administration's recent moves to circumvent Congress's spending power have made lawmakers unsure whether any deal they strike amongst themselves will be further tweaked by Trump.

"If this president can say, I refuse to spend money the way it was appropriated, why would any bipartisan group of senators be able to come to and keep an appropriations deal going forward?" Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told reporters this week. "I get it, there's some disagreement about USAID, but the much more fundamental fight is over whether an agreement in appropriations, that is a law, will be respected."

According to the Nixon-era Impoundment Control Act and subsequent court cases, it's illegal for a president to simply refuse to spend congressionally approved funds. Trump and his allies have long signaled that they view that law as unconstitutional and will challenge it in the courts.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a letter to colleagues on Monday that Trump's recent spending moves "must be choked off in the upcoming government funding bill," signaling a bid to use government funding as leverage to get Trump to change course. The following day, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Jeffries had "laid out the foundation for a government shutdown."

Republicans are generally seen as unable to pass a government funding bill on their own in the House, owing to their extremely slim majority and the existence of a hardline conservative bloc that's unwilling to pass bills that don't include extremely steep cuts. Even if that were possible, the Senate's 60-vote "filibuster" rule means that Democratic cooperation is needed in the upper chamber.

For Republicans, there's an expectation that Democrats will play ball when it comes to government funding, especially given Johnson's frequent reliance on Democrats to pass funding bills in the last year or so. That's true even for the more Trump-skeptical in the GOP.

"There's no avoiding the cooperation that is required," Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told BI, adding that she believes Democrats' objections to Musk and funding freezes can be kept separate from the government funding fight. "It's too important. We've got to get this done."

But among Democrats, there's a sense that their general willingness to fund the government has been taken for granted and that if there is a shutdown, it will be Republicans' to own.

"It's up to the Republicans. They're in charge of the House, the Senate, and the White House," Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin told BI. "So, you know, if Morticia and Cousin Itt and Uncle Fester can all agree on something, then we won't have a shutdown. My guess is they're going to have some difficulty."

If no government funding bill is passed by March 14, the federal government will run out of funding and shut down, aside from some essential functions.

That means federal workers would be at least temporarily out of work, airports would be delayed, national parks would be shuttered, and more.

Politically, shutdowns tend to be painful for the party in power. The last time that the government shut down was in December 2018, when Trump's demand for billions of dollars in border wall funding was unable to pass Congress. At 35 days, it remains the longest shutdown in American history.

[verycleverboy]

In Breaking USAID, the Trump Administration May Have Broken the Law

ProPublica’s reporting provides new details about what legal risk officials were prepared to take and what laws they may have violated on th

Around Jan. 31, Jason Gray, the acting administrator of USAID, passed along orders to the agency’s IT department to hand the entire digital network to Musk’s engineers, Luke Farritor and Gavin Kliger, among others. (Farritor, Kliger and Gray did not respond to requests for comment.) From there, the engineers from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency quickly gained access to USAID’s financial system. On top of that, they became “super administrators” and had access to thousands of employees’ personal information, including their desktop files and emails, two USAID officials told ProPublica. The material also included information gathered during security clearance background checks, ranging from Social Security numbers and credit histories to home addresses. “They had complete access to everything you could think of,” one official said. “The keys to the kingdom.” By providing that access, USAID may have violated the Privacy Act of 1974, three experts on the law told ProPublica, regardless if the engineers were government employees at the time. The law requires consent from individuals before the government gives their private information to anyone.[...] In addition to the Privacy Act, experts told ProPublica the administration may have broken other laws while violating the Constitution itself, including the separation of powers and a president’s duty to faithfully execute the laws of the land. Failing to notify Congress before making major changes to the agency may have transgressed the Administrative Procedures Act, and freezing money appropriated by Congress for foreign aid could be in violation of the Impoundment Control Act.

Officials and experts have been closely watching the developments at USAID out of fear that Trump will deploy the same playbook to target other agencies he has publicly criticized, including the Department of Education. The Republican-controlled Congress and Trump’s Department of Justice are unlikely to initiate investigations into allegations of wrongdoing by administration officials. In fact, the DOJ’s acting U.S. attorney in Washington, who was a lawyer for Jan. 6 defendants, signaled the very opposite in a recent series of letters to Musk, promising to investigate people who illegally impeded DOGE’s efforts or even those who just acted unethically “and chase them to the end of the Earth.” The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.

(full article)

[intelligentchristianlady]

Team Trump eyes Congress’ power of the purse as part of new power grab

One of the president’s most controversial Cabinet nominees wants to shuffle the deck on core American principles, such as checks and balance

This is scary. You should read it--"impoundment" touches every aspect of life.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Russ Vought’s fingerprints are all over Trump’s new federal funding freeze

John Knefel at MMFA:

A new memo issued by the Trump administration directing the federal government to temporarily cease disbursing billions of dollars in funds appears to draw on arguments made by Russ Vought, the president’s selectee to run the Office of Management and Budget. Vought was a primary architect of Project 2025, a sprawling effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and staffing recommendations for President Donald Trump’s second term. In addition to that role, Vought is also the founder of the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-aligned think tank that has spent over a year arguing that the president can unilaterally refuse to spend funds allocated by Congress, an authority known as the impoundment power that was severely curtailed by Congress in 1974.

The new Trump administration memo was issued by Matthew Vaeth, acting director of OMB pending Vought’s confirmation vote. The document calls for federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”  “The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” the memo states. Although the two-page memo doesn’t use the term impoundment, law professor Steve Vladeck argued that the Trump administration is claiming “the unilateral power to at least temporarily ‘impound’ tens of billions of dollars of appropriated funds—in direct conflict with Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, and in even more flagrant violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.” The existence of the document was first reported by journalist Marisa Kabas and later confirmed by The Washington Post and The New York Times. (OMB issued a follow-up memo claiming the freeze does “not apply across-the-board” and withheld funds are “not an impoundment under the Impoundment Control Act.”)

The direct effects of the memo are unknown given its scope and vagueness, but they could be detrimental even if the pause is short-lived.

“Experts said the memo as written was poised to bring a rapid halt to scores of federal functions, from assistance to homeless shelters to financial aid for college students,” the Post reported. “Health grants distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state aid for disaster reconstruction, might face delays.” The memo appears to exempt Social Security and Medicare recipients, and it says the halt “does not include assistance provided directly to individuals.” It isn’t clear whether Medicaid recipients will be affected, although some early reports indicated that payments had been disrupted.

Project 2025 architect Russ Vought had his handprints all over the federal funding freeze.

See Also:

HuffPost: The 50-Year-Old Law Trump Is Challenging To Create Chaos

The Guardian: Trump move to pause federal loans and grants rooted in Project 2025

Ahmed Baba: Trump’s Funding Freeze Power Grab Causes Chaos And Legal Firestorm

[justinspoliticalcorner]

New Trump memo claims authority to ignore Congress

On Monday, the Trump administration issued an extraordinary memo ordering federal agencies to indefinitely freeze the "disbursement of all F

Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby at Judd Legum at Popular Information:

On Monday, the Trump administration issued an extraordinary memo ordering federal agencies to indefinitely freeze the "disbursement of all Federal financial assistance." The freeze was scheduled to take effect at 5 PM on Tuesday, according to the memo, authored by the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, Matthew J. Vaeth. Each agency has until February 10 to provide detailed information about every grant, loan, or financial assistance program covered by the memo. Even after submitting this information, the freeze continues "until OMB has reviewed and provided guidance to your agency with respect to the information submitted." Essentially, agencies are prohibited from spending money on Congressionally authorized financial assistance programs until the Trump administration reviews and approves each program. (Financial assistance provided directly to individuals, such as Social Security and Medicare, are excluded from the new directive.)

The stated purpose of the freeze is to prevent the "use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies," which the memo describes as "a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve." The memo suggests that federal agencies are prohibited from spending money for these purposes because of a series of executive orders, such as Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, issued by President Donald Trump in the first days of his presidency. The first issue with the memo is that the articulated policy is hopelessly vague. The Green New Deal is a set of policies that were proposed but never enacted into law. Marxism is a political philosophy, not a category of financial assistance programs administered by the federal government. There is no explanation of how an agency could determine which programs include these supposedly prohibited concepts.

The second issue is the process described by the memo is illegal. Once Congress passes a law that includes a financial assistance program and the president signs the law, the executive branch must execute the law. There is no exception to this rule for programs that allegedly support Marxism, transgenderism, or the Green New Deal. If Trump opposes any financial assistance program that Congress has previously funded, the legal course of action is to convince Congress to rescind the funding. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 provides the only legal mechanism for an administration to temporarily withhold funding for a program. Under the law, Trump could delay funding a program for up to 45 days if he first sends a message to Congress explaining why he believes funding should be rescinded. But if Congress does not pass legislation rescinding the funds within 45 days, the administration must disperse the funds. Trump has not sent any such message to Congress. As a result, the freeze of funds is illegal.

[...]

Even a temporary freeze will have major consequences

The memo did not specify precisely what programs will be affected, but it could impact billions of dollars in federal spending. Programs that could be affected by the freeze include the National School Lunch Program, which “feeds about 28 million American schoolchildren each month” and Meals on Wheels, which “delivers about 250 million meals each year to more than 2 million seniors.” Other programs that could lose funding include disaster relief aid, assistance for homeless shelters, housing assistance, and education programs. Diane Yentel, the chief executive of The National Council of Nonprofits, released a statement expressing concern about programs researching “cures for childhood cancer,” offering “safety from domestic violence,” and running “suicide hotlines” losing funding. “The impact of even a short pause in funding could be devastating and cost lives,” Yentel said. According to a White House fact sheet posted to X by Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein, programs that provide “direct benefits to Americans [are] explicitly excluded from the pause and exempted from this review process.” The fact sheet claims that Medicaid, SNAP, funds for small businesses, Pell Grants, Head Start, and rental assistance will not be impacted. But despite the White House’s claims, the Head Start reimbursement system was shut down in Connecticut yesterday, according to Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). Head Start, which provides low-income children with access to preschool, “served 778,000 children in 2023.” Murphy said that the White House fact sheet was inaccurate and preschools in his state "cannot pay staff and will need to start laying off staff very soon and sending little kids home.” Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) posted on X that his staff had “confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down in all 50 states following last night’s federal funding freeze.” Wyden called it a "blatant attempt to rip away health insurance from millions of Americans overnight and will get people killed.” The White House said that the Medicaid outage was simply a technical problem. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X that they were “aware of the Medicaid website portal outage” and the portal was expected to “be back online shortly.” The Medicaid website, however, warned of delays due to “executive orders regarding potentially unallowable grant payments.”

Nearly “a fifth of all Americans” receive health insurance through Medicaid.

The infamous federal funding freeze memo (that has since been temporarily stayed) is part of Trump’s plan to do an end-run around Congress and consolidate power in the Executive Branch.

See Also:

The Status Kuo (Jay Kuo): The Incompetent Liars

[justinspoliticalcorner]

SCOTUS's Republican appointees let Trump ignore Congress, cut foreign aid

Justice Kagan, dissenting for the Democratic appointees, noted the majority's "preliminary" order means $4 billion in aid allotted by Congre

Chris Geidner at Law Dork:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican appointees on Friday issued an order allowing President Donald Trump to unilaterally hold back $4 billion in foreign aid funding — overturning the decision of Congress that was previously signed into law. It was a ruling that required a willful disregard for some of the most fundamental understandings of America’s federal government — and prompted a sharp dissent from the Democratic appointees. The shadow docket ruling addressed $4 billion in funds that Trump has asked Congress to rescind under a provision in another law, the Impoundment Control Act. Congress has not acted on that, however, meaning the administration is still obligated to spend the money. The unsigned order from the Supreme Court on Friday nonetheless blocked a lower court’s order that would have required the Trump administration to spend the money by September 30, when that funding expires. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent for her and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, “The effect is to prevent the funds from reaching their intended recipients—not just now but (because of their impending expiration) for all time.“

There is no justification for the Republican-appointee majority’s decision — which itself came 17 days after Chief Justice John Roberts granted the Trump administration an “administrative” stay in the case. Roberts’s “administrative” stay blocked the district court’s order until the majority could on Friday issue what amounted to five sentences of mostly conclusory reasoning to justify allowing the Trump administration to refuse to spend billions of dollars in foreign aid funding that Congress decided the United States should spend. On the two primary issues on which the court based its decision — the meaning of the Impoundment Control Act in this case and the so-called “harms” claimed by the administration to justify a stay of the injunction — Kagan meticulously explained why the one-sentence explanations from the majority1 do not even stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.

In the State Department v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition case, the 6-3 MAGA Majority judicial activists on SCOTUS once again gives Donald Trump permission to unlawfully block $4BN of foreign aid from being used.

See Also:

HuffPost: Supreme Court Lets Trump Freeze $4.9B in Foreign Aid Funds

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Trump Bid to Block $4.9 Billion With 'Pocket Rescission' Blasted as 'Authoritarianism 101' | Common Dreams

Democracy defenders and Congress members are outraged at Trump's attempt to block $4.9 billion in foreign aid via a "pocket rescission."

Jessica Corbett at Common Dreams:

Democracy defenders and members of Congress are condemning US President Donald Trump's effort to use a "pocket rescission" process to block $4.9 billion in foreign aid as authoritarian and illegal. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Friday shared on social media Trump's letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) about the move. According to a White House fact sheet linked in a subsequent post, much of the money was headed for the US Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which Trump has gutted. As The Associated Press explained:

[The 1974 Impoundment Control Act gives the president the authority to propose canceling funds approved by Congress. Congress can within 45 days vote on pulling back the funds or sustaining them, but by proposing the rescission so close to September 30 the White House argues that the money won’t be spent and the funding lapses. What was essentially the last pocket rescission occurred in 1977 by Democratic then-President Jimmy Carter, and the Trump administration argues it's a legally permissible tool despite some murkiness as Carter had initially proposed the clawback well ahead of the 45-day deadline.]

Shortly after the OMB social media posts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that OMB Director Russ Vought was helping shutter USAID, writing on the platform X: "Since January, we've saved the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. And with a small set of core programs moved over to the State Department, USAID is officially in closeout mode. Russ is now at the helm to oversee the closeout of an agency that long ago went off the rails. Congrats, Russ."

More insanity from Tyrant 47: he orders the blocking of nearly $5M of foreign aid in a lawless “pocket rescission.”

See Also:

LGBTQ Nation: Trump slashes $5 billion in foreign aid, blames wasteful LGBTQ+ spending

AP, via The Guardian: Trump bypasses Congress to cancel $4.9bn in foreign aid