This piece originally appeared at Legislative Procedure.
Republicans in Congress want to use a special budget process to codify spending cuts identified by President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency. Since taking office, Trump has implemented many of DOGE's recommendations via executive action by impounding federal funding for agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). And lawmakers supportive of Trump's cost-cutting efforts hope to persuade their colleagues to approve a rescissions package locking in those cuts if the president decides to send one to the House and Senate.
Congress created the rescission process in a bid to streamline and limit the president’s impoundment power. Whatever the merits of the argument advanced by Trump and some top administration officials that the law creating that process is unconstitutional, it nevertheless established a process that the president's allies in the House and Senate can now use to codify many of the executive actions he has already taken. Lawmakers doing so could reduce the controversy surrounding many of the president's DOGE cuts and make it harder for a future president – or a future Congress – to reverse them. But they can't use that process to make approving Trump's spending cuts easier until the president takes the first step.
Congress's Power of the Purse
Congress is the primary actor in the federal budget process because it has the power of the purse. The Constitution's Appropriations clause (Article I, section 9, clause 7) stipulates that "no Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." Lawmakers use the power of the purse to pay for the government programs and projects they authorize in law.
