No, Congress Didn’t Give Up Its Spending Power

As regulars know, I’m a big fan of the NYT podcast The Daily. However, today’s episode, “Congress Just Gave Away Spending Power to Trump,” was just . . . bizarre. The premise:

President Trump has achieved a major victory: persuading both chambers of Congress to cancel billions of dollars in spending that they had already approved.

In the process, the Republican-led Congress is giving Mr. Trump the power that it, and it alone, is supposed to have.

It features NYT congressional correspondent Catie Edmondson and is based on her report, “Congress Agrees to Claw Back Foreign Aid and Public Broadcast Funds.”

Congress approved a White House request to claw back $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting, after Republicans bowed to President Trump in an unusual surrender of congressional spending power.

The House’s 216-to-213 vote early Friday morning sent the package to Mr. Trump for his signature. Two Republicans, Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Michael R. Turner of Ohio, opposed the measure.

The Senate approved the package in a predawn 51-to-48 vote the day before, overcoming the objections of two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who argued that their party was ceding Congress’s constitutional control over federal funding.

The bulk of the funds targeted — about $8 billion — was for foreign assistance programs. The remaining $1.1 billion was for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which finances NPR and PBS.

The debate on the measure laid bare a simmering fight over Congress’s power of the purse. Since Mr. Trump began his second term, the White House has moved aggressively and at times unilaterally, primarily through the Department of Government Efficiency, to expand the executive branch’s control over federal spending, a power the Constitution gives to the legislative branch.

Top White House officials, led by Russell T. Vought, the budget office director, have sought to rein in the size of the federal government, including by freezing funds appropriated by Congress. It is part of a wider campaign to claim far-reaching powers over federal spending for the president.

This time, the administration went through a formal process by submitting what is known as a rescissions bill. Those measures are rare and seldom succeed, given how tightly Congress has historically guarded its power over federal spending. The last such package to be enacted was in 1999, under President Bill Clinton.

I fully agree that Congress has frequently ceded its power to the President over the years. This has especially been true under the current administration, which has refused to spend money appropriated by Congress and even shuttered entired agencies created by and funded by Congress.

But this particular episode is not such an instance. Here, the President requested that Congress pass a bill and . . . Congress passed the bill. That’s how things are supposed to work. Congress didn’t give up its power over spending; it exercised it.

To be sure, the fact that Congressional Republicans spinelessly go along with whatever President Trump wants is problematic. But that’s a function of their cowardice and his perceived clout with the base, not the institutional power of Congress. A majority-Democratic Congress—even in just one House—wouldn’t have passed this.