Watchdog: Trump's $800M+ Budget Impoundment Is Illegal

Full report

The Government Accountability Office, the independent non-partisan watchdog that works for Congress, said in a letter sent to federal lawmakers and Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday that President Donald Trump is not permitted to withhold more than $800 million in congressionally approved spending beyond the end of the fiscal year.

Trump announced on Friday night his intention to impound the funds from 11 appropriations accounts, using a contested maneuver known as a "pocket rescission" to target funding for immigrant services, diversity-focused initiatives and other programs. The Fiscal Times reports $810 million in cuts, with $567 million from the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services.

"Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress's constitutional power of the purse," wrote the GAO's general counsel, Edda Emmanuelli Perez.

Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the administration may withhold funds for 45 days while Congress considers a rescission request, but must release the money if Congress does not act. The GAO said Trump made congressional action all but impossible by announcing the cuts with just five days left in the fiscal year, with the House out of session through the November election.

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro said the finding confirms that the so-called pocket rescissions are "anti-constitutional and illegal," and urged Congress to constrain the Office of Management and Budget's authority over taxpayer funds.