Dem
47
GOP
53
Richard Nixon had a habit of refusing to spend money on projects he disliked, even if Congress had duly appropriated funds for them. Congress got wise and passed a law banning this practice, which is known as impoundment. Donald Trump also wanted to impound funds during Trump v1.0, but was stymied by the law. Now he has learned a trick that is almost as good as impoundment and also legal. It rests on two peculiarities in the appropriation process:
This has led the administration to use a new strategy. Make a bipartisan deal with the Democrats to include items both parties want in the funding bill. Then afterwards, retroactively cancel the parts the Democrats got as part of the deal using the rescissions process. This allows Republicans to negotiate an agreement with the Democrats and then later legally renege on it. Republicans have already done this once, the first time a rescission has been done in decades. Republicans are plotting to do it again with the bill needed to fund the government after Oct. 1. Democrats don't know what to do.
Part of the problem is that Republicans know that if they play dirty pool, they will get away with it because
Democrats won't respond in kind next time they get the trifecta. It is not in their nature for the Democrats to write
their own giant BBB, make the Republicans actually filibuster it in August on the floor of the Senate, turn off the air
conditioning, and run the heat in the Senate full blast to get it to over 100 F and wait for senators to drop like flies
from heat stroke. Republicans play hardball and Democrats play softball pickleball.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: "They are going to stab us in the back again." Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is concerned. She has asked OMB Director Russell Vought to aim for more cuts through the regular bipartisan order rather than through the rescissions process, which would infuriate the Democrats. Vought could care less what Collins wants, despite her being chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which (in theory) controls the appropriations process (along with its House counterpart). Vought dripped with arrogance when he said: "There is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said, 'I'm voting for a bipartisan appropriations process.'"
Sen Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said of Vought: "I don't know what to think other than that he's testing to see where we're going to line up. Are we going to line up following our own Article I authorities or are we going to line up and just follow the president?" Big words, but of course, MACO.
But some senators are all for the rescissions strategy. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said: "The only time I have seen us reduce spending is through a rescission package. I'll take a dozen of them." Actually, if he wanted to reduce spending, he could have voted against the BBB, but he didn't.
The only weapon Democrats have is to demand that the rescissions law be changed to make it subject to the same rules as the appropriations bill—that is, to make it subject to a filibuster. If the Republicans refuse, then the Democrats could refuse to vote for the appropriations bill and shut the government down on Oct. 1. This has obvious risks since this whole rescissions business is extremely inside baseball and almost no one (our loyal readers excepted) understands what is going on here. Trying to explain it to the public would be... challenging, at best. On the other hand, since the public doesn't understand the process at all, Democrats could shut down the government in October and say: "Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the House. It is their job to fund the government. We are powerless. It is not our fault they are fighting with each other." This is not exactly the full story, but it might be good enough for many voters. In any event, come November 2026, voters might remember only two things: (1) Republicans control everything and (2) They couldn't fund the government so it shut down. It might work. (V)