toreading Administration and Budget Office (Management and Budget OfficeIt may seem normal, but the role is one of the most important roles of Washington. Russell FootWho did this task in the last two years of Donald Trump’s first term, is about to return. After the voting scheduled for the coming days, it is expected to test the boundaries of the presidential authority while the new administration is trying to reshape the federal government.
In a confirmation of his appointment on January 15, he informed Senators that he had sworded Trump’s pledge to continue “reservation”. This is the practice of the presidents refusing to spend the money allocated by Congress and transfer power to the White House. Let’s take a contemporary example, Trump issued an executive order that puts an “immediate suspension” of billions of dollars allocated under the 2021 inflation law and climate law as of 2022. No money will be spent on current projects – including new methods. And bridges and electric car charging stations – until the administration decides any efforts “corresponds to any review recommendations” Trump officials have chosen “adopting.” The same applies to Ukraine’s military aid.
Foot said at the hearing that Trump was nominated for “the issue of reservation”, and “200 years of presidents used this authority.” The reservation monitoring law said (ICA() For the year 1974, which was passed to curb the presidents after Richard Nixon stopped billions of dollars for education, armed forces and the environment, was unconstitutional. (It is one of the many restrictions imposed by the Watergate period on the presidency and which Trump wants to get rid of). His inner circle speaks as one in this regard. In an opening article in Wall Street Journal After the elections, Ilon Musk Vivek Ramasuami wrote that Trump can reduce federal spending “through executive procedures alone.”
During the first period of Trump, Foot participated in the freezing of $ 214 million of Ukraine’s military aid, a reservation that led to the first accountability of Trump in 2019. In the hearing this month, Foot indicated that the money was eventually released after “policy The “operation” carried out by the administration.
Foot colleagues in his research center, the American Renewal Center, presented the constitutional and historical argument for reservation in a pair of blogging and a white paper last year. The main author, Mark Paulta, was the first lawyer in the court Management and Budget Office During the first period of Trump and was nominated for this position again. Paulta writes that the reservation is “a major tool to ensure the implementation of the group of financing measures taken by Congress in a legal and reasonable manner that guarantees good rule.” He says that the authority flows from several pillars in the constitution, including a clause in Article Two, calling on presidents “to ensure the implementation of laws honestly.” “[I]Paulta declares that “if the financial accreditation violates the constitution, it is permissible for the president to confiscate it.”
Paulta says that the presidents have been being held for centuries. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson chose not to spend $ 50,000, which Congress linked to the Military River in the Mississippi River. Franklin Roosevelt was widely detained during the recession period and the Second World War. Harry Truman delayed the money spending for old warriors hospitals. John Kennedy confiscated nearly half of the amount of Congress allocated to $ 380 million for70 strategic launchers. In short, Paulta claims that “the authority of Congress with regard to money” has always been aimed at determining the “ceiling” of the executive spending, not “ground” at all.
“The president has no constitutional authority to book,” Zakari Price, a law professor at the University of California, San Francisco, replies. Price notes that Jefferson’s military boats are not funded by a law “allowing spending without the need for that.” Under the law, the president can buy “a number not exceeding fifteen armed boats” using “an amount not exceeding fifty thousand dollars.” This included discretionary power was common in laws for decades. Price explains that even when the language has become less flexible, Congress usually allocates money in a “lenient, not mandatory” way. Even Nixon, the reservations were not “any confirmation of the constitutional power to act in contradiction with the directives of Congress.”
the ICA Make this rule binding. When the president wants to delay spending, he must send a special note to inform Congress and he must spend money by the end of the fiscal year. He cannot cancel the payment directly without explicit approval from Congress. Elweiz Passachov, a law professor at Georgetown University, does not see a great basis for challenging the constitutionality of law ICA. In 1998, the Supreme Court canceled the veto (veto) on one of the items – the reservation in another name – because it allowed the presidents to rape the authority of Congress. Even the conservative judge Antonin Scalia, as Ms. Passachov notes, “literally rejects the theory of reservation” in his separate opinion on this case.
Some members of Congress support the abolition of this law ICA. Mike Li, a Utah -Senate member of this law as “from the remains of the Watergate era”, and in December submitted legislation to get rid of it. But there are not enough sounds to pass such a law. This makes the courts the best way before Vogue and his partners to achieve their goal.
Who may resist in court? It is not disturbed legislators, because members of the individual Congress do not have a place to sue themselves. Mrs. Passachov says that there are many potential prosecutors: states, cities and defense contractors, for example. And any actual or potential recipients of money that compete for contracts or apply for grants – in areas such as information or construction technology – can reach the court by showing that the president’s militant grip has harm them. But determining the “status” (the right to file a lawsuit before the court) may not be an easy matter, says Lawrence of Emory University, and there are “other great obstacles to the judicial review of spending decisions.” ■
