In light of Trump’s unprecedented freeze on nearly all federal spending other than the salaries of federal employees, Social Security, Medicare, and the U.S. military, I’ve been studying up on the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. All those years ago, President Richard Nixon had a practice of impounding, or refusing to spend, money appropriated by Congress for programs he didn’t like. In at least one case, he had vetoed the bill appropriating the money, but Congress overrode his veto.

Other presidents before Nixon held back on spending appropriated money, but it appears that in at least some cases the objective desired by Congress didn’t require all the money appropriated. Or, in some cases circumstances changed, making the appropriation unnecessary. For example, during Thomas Jefferson’s administration Congress appropriated money for some gunboats to put down some kind of lawlessness on the Mississippi River. But Jefferson decided “The favorable and peaceable turn of affairs on the Mississippi rendered an immediate execution of that law unnecessary.” The 1974 law was sustained and strengthened by the Supreme Court in Train v. City of New York, 420 U.S. 35 (1975).

It’s my understanding that the 1974 act provides a means for a President to inform Congress if he really believes that not all appropriated money needs to be spent to secure what Congress wants. but Congress then has to agree the POTUS doesn’t have to spend it. A lot of presidents ever since have complained that the required procedures for not spending money are cumbersome, and a bit more flexibility would be nice. But Congress has the power of the purse, and presidents are not supposed to unilaterally substitute their own judgment for what Congress has decided to spend money on.

Here is the memo that was sent out last night announcing the freeze. I like this part especially.

Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending “wokeness” and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again. 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.

Among the apparently frozen programs are two that affect my day-to-day life, Medicaid and housing assistance grants. Earlier today all the Medicaid portals in all 50 states went down. The White House is claiming this has nothing to do with the freeze, and the portals will all be back online shortly. But if Medicaid payments are frozen, how are reimbursements supposed to go out? Is my Eliquis going to go back to costing $175 a month? What if I need a medical procedure I can’t afford? You understand my concern, I’m sure. And I’m thinking also of the majority of nursing home patients, whose bills are paid by Medicaid. What happens to them?

And the owner of the apartment building I live in gets a housing assistance grant that, I understand, makes up the difference between the reduced rents we seniors are paying here and what the apartments would rent for on the current rental market. I don’t know how the grant money is paid, but I assume there’s a limit to how long he can go without getting it.

Josh Marshall writes,

So I write the following with the caveat that everything in the unfolding Trump administration is cloaked in secrecy and uncertain from one moment to the next. But overnight President Trump kicked off a what can only be called both a wide-ranging constitutional crisis and also very likely a fiscal crisis. He has unilaterally halted – as of 5 pm this evening, according to an executive memorandum first reported by independent journalist Marisa Kabas – all “grant, loan and federal assistance programs” for at least 90 days. This appears to include everything the federal government does beyond the salaries of federal employees, direct checks to Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries and the US military. Mainstream media journalists are calling this “temporary” or a “pause”. But that’s like saying you’re “temporarily” shutting down Congress or “pausing” elections. “Temporary” isn’t a meaningful term in this case. It’s hard to think through everything affected. Already the halt to USAID budgets has cut off funding for the prison guards holding 9,500 ISIS prisoners in northeastern Syria, according to Syria expert Charles Lister. Cancer research, major parts of every state’s budget, the grants that keep the local daycare center running. This hits basically everything.

I’m seeing posts on Bluesky saying that the Small Business Administration loans for disaster relief in places like Los Angeles and North Carolina have been frozen, too.

This happened so suddenly it may take a few days for people to realize it happened. But what was announced yesterday was just a phase of the freeze. It had begun earlier.

On Inauguration Day, Trump ordered a 90-day pause in almost all foreign aid to give the administration a chance to ensure that it fits with its priorities. “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” the executive order read.

Then on Friday, the State Department issued a “stop-work” order that surprised global health experts by stopping funds for not only future aid projects but also existing programs.

Over the weekend, USAID staff were told in an email by Ken Jackson, assistant to the administrator for management and resources, that the “pause on all foreign assistance means a complete halt” and that USAID staff should help ensure that aid work aligns with Trump’s America First policy and that staff who to ignore these orders could be disciplined. NPR obtained a copy of the email.

Some USAID staff have already been laid off for allegedly trying to get around this executive order.

Trump had also already “paused” “the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” All of this is supposed to be about everything being paused until the Administration can review the spending and decide if it should continue. But one, that’s not really the Administration’s job in the case of congressional appropriations. And two, a review of federal spending is not a bad thing, but the freeze wasn’t necessary to do that.

Russell Berman writes in The Atlantic that the Trump Administration plans to argue that the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is unconstitutional. They can certainly argue that, but they might want to have waited for a court’s opinion before going ahead with impoundment.

Berman interviews a bunch of people who say that what the Administration is doing is certainly illegal, and they believe the courts, including the SCOTUS, will rule against Trump on this issue. However, it would have been better if Congressional Republicans rose up to stop him, and so far that doesn’t seem to be happening. And until there’s a court decision all kinds of people are going to be in all kinds of limbo, waiting to know what’s going to happen with programs they depend on.

The Washington Post (sorry I’m out of gift articles for the month) is reporting now that the White House says the new freeze was only intended for foreign aid and DEI programs. That’s not what the memo says, but whatever. WaPo continued,