The sun rises over the United States Capitol. Photo / Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post
There are really three political parties in Washington, according to an old saying: Democrats, Republicans and appropriators.
The latter are members of Congress lucky enough to get placed on the powerful committees that dole out roughly US$1.6 trillion ($2.8t) in United States federal funds for the military and government services each year.
They have traditionally shared a common goal of jealously guarding their tremendous ability to steer federal resources. It’s a bond that often defies the political rules of gravity that govern everything else on Capitol Hill.
Now, those ties are being tested like never before: The White House was aggressively encroaching on Congress’ power of the purse even before it began using the ongoing government shutdown as justification for rolling back billions more in spending.
Democratic, and many Republican, appropriators are angry at the Trump Administration’s White House for unilaterally cancelling contracts, abruptly freezing billions of dollars in congressionally sanctioned funding, and trying out a “pocket rescission” technique to permanently withhold US$5 billion in foreign aid without congressional input.
Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, have largely swallowed those concerns out of fealty to US President Donald Trump. In the process, they have allowed their power to erode.
“The Administration is taking all the reins and Congress doesn’t really have a say on anything,” said Fred Upton, the Republican from Michigan who chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee until 2017.
“No one’s putting their hand up to say ‘stop’. It’s just happening.”
The implications of that erosion are significant and long-lasting, say scholars of the US political system and congressional observers.
They could permanently tip the balance of power away from Congress and towards the executive branch on an issue - how the US spends its money - that has traditionally been the unquestioned purview of the legislative branch.
“It is an absolute threat to Congress’ power of the purse,” said Robert Shea, a Republican who served in senior political roles at the White House budget office.
“I come from a time when the administration feared the repercussions of crossing the appropriators. That time has passed.”
The Trump Administration - led by budget chief Russell Vought - is intentionally pushing the boundaries of executive authority on government spending.
Vought wants the Supreme Court to hear challenges to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which puts strict limits on the ability of the executive branch to withhold money that has been approved by Congress. Vought has said he believes that law is unconstitutional.
“If Congress lays down its arms on its most fundamental authority, I don’t know what leg they’re going to have to stand on going forward,” said Brendan Buck, who was an aide to former GOP House speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner.
“Presidents will take advantage of this opportunity, knowing this is one more area where Congress has weakened itself and the administration can just run over them.”
In the face of this onslaught, a few Republicans on Capitol Hill are guarding their spending prerogatives.
Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), a moderate institutionalist now at the helm of the powerful Appropriations Committee after five terms in the Senate, is one of them.
Collins has, in her careful way, raised the alarm at the incursion into congressional territory more than most of her GOP peers.
That’s particularly true when it comes to pocket rescissions, which occur when the executive branch attempts to claw back congressionally approved funds close to the end of the financial year, leaving lawmakers little time to dispute the cuts.
Under a pocket rescission, lawmakers do not need to approve the cut for it to go into effect, unlike typical rescissions. In August, the Administration announced it was cancelling US$5b in foreign aid in a pocket rescission.
Collins said she was blindsided by the manoeuvre, which came shortly after the Senate narrowly voted for a traditional rescission request from Vought in July to cancel US$9b in foreign aid and other spending. (Collins opposed that cut).
“The pocket rescission was dropped on us at midnight, and Russ called me at eight the next morning to tell me about it,” she added. “And that’s not how one should operate.”
Many of Collins’s colleagues feel as she does about the pocket rescission but have voiced their objections behind closed doors to avoid angering the White House.
“Appropriators are frustrated,” said one senior GOP member of the House Appropriations Committee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the administration. The lawmaker called the pocket rescission “stupid”.
“Obviously it’s going to have an impact on trust,” the appropriator said.
Collins said that “most” of the appropriators she’s spoken to fear that the technique “diminishes the balance of power between the executive and legislative branch”.
Pocket rescissions, Collins contends, severely eat into appropriators’ ability to negotiate sweeping deals across parties, which presidents are then forced to sign or veto in their entirety, because the minority party may not trust the agreement will be implemented.
Her counterpart in the House, Appropriations chair Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), said he feels Democrats are experiencing “paranoia” about the pocket rescission. “This is not a big package, [the Administration] didn’t come up with US$100b or US$30b,” he said.
Still, Cole would rather Congress have a say in the matter by voting for or against the rescission rather than having it take effect automatically.
“I’m an appropriator, I always think we ought to vote,” he said.
“I would vote for this rescission - there’s nothing in there I find objectionable. But I don’t like the idea of dealing Congress out of the appropriations process.”
Late last month, the Supreme Court backed up the White House, staying a lower court order that had directed them to pay out the funds. The court noted it has yet to make a final determination on the legality of pocket rescissions.
The Administration’s “aggressive” incursion into the power of the purse follows decades of members of Congress ceding their authority to the executive on other matters like tariffs and war powers, according to Molly Reynolds, an expert at the centre-left think- tank the Brookings Institution.
The appropriations process - although messy and increasingly partisan in recent years - had remained generally free from the reach of the executive branch.
“For a long time we have thought that appropriators were an independent base of power somewhat outside of the party structure,” she said.
“So one might have expected that even some Republican appropriators would be pushing back against what the executive branch is doing.”
While some Republicans, like Collins, are challenging the White House, other Republican appropriators argue that the ballooning federal debt merits executive hardball, given that Congress has a long track record of approving more and more spending without making matching cuts.
“I believe that we don’t have a choice about reducing spending,” said Senator John Neely Kennedy (R-Louisiana), a member of the committee. “The only time I’ve seen us reduce spending from the 10 years I’ve been here is through a rescissions package.”
Democrats are aghast at the lack of co-ordinated pushback from their GOP colleagues.
Republicans have individually pushed Cabinet secretaries and the White House to release some frozen funds meant for after-school programming and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). But there hasn’t been a collective move to challenge the White House on its spending agenda.
“If I had worked my entire career to be on Appropriations and I am now writing the appropriations bill for the United States of America, I would not let a president even of my own party play around with my work product,” said Senator Tim Kaine (D-Virginia).
However, appropriators are making some moves to reassert their authority.
Collins and the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Patty Murray of Washington, managed to pass three of the 12 appropriations bills on the Senate floor before August with large bipartisan majorities.
Those bills contained some new elements meant to protect against the Administration’s meddling.
Tables setting out specific programme-by-programme spending levels that used to be included in a separate report are now being included in the text of the appropriations bills in the hope that the Administration would be legally bound to respect the details.
The appropriators are also requiring the Administration to notify the committee if any contracts are cancelled - a response to mass cancellation of government contracts under the US Doge Service.
“Mr Vought is very fond of freezing, pausing, and terminating ongoing contracts, and it’s been very hard in some cases to find out exactly which ones have been affected,” Collins said.
She said she would also like to amend the impoundment law to close the “loophole” that the White House is using to justify pocket rescissions.
Collins’ commitment to negotiating bipartisan spending bills has drawn criticism from some in her caucus who want to cut costs, whatever the tactics.
At a closed-door lunch of Senate Republicans in July, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) criticised the spending levels Collins agreed to as too high.
Collins shot back, noting that her male predecessors, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Thad Cochran of Mississippi, never faced the same kind of second-guessing, according to two people with knowledge of the interaction.
The incident, which was first reported by Punchbowl News, underscored the chairwoman’s irritation at the lack of deference her once revered position now receives.
Collins declined to comment on the incident; Johnson said he did not take Collins’ frustration as directed at him personally.
Collins said she’s been far more transparent with her conference than past appropriations leaders.
She also touted the three appropriations bills that recently passed the Senate with large bipartisan majorities as a sign that the Senate may be, in its slow way, trying to guard its power.
“That indicates to me an understanding by the Senate … of the need to … prevent the Administration from using congressional inaction as an excuse for exceeding its powers,” she said.
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