Senate Amendment to H.R. 4
Floor Speech
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, there is another critical point I must make about the rescissions proposal that the House is now considering. OMB's defiance of the norms around review of special messages and the law mandating disclosure of apportionments appears to be designed to evade review of the rescission proposals by the Congress, Congress's watchdog, and the public alike.
Unlike in the past, OMB has refused to make the apportionments for the accounts at issue available to the Government Accountability Office for their required review under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. In its report to Congress on the June 3, 2025, special message proposing these rescissions, the Government Accountability Office noted that for ``previous special messages, GAO has reviewed updated apportionment data to ensure [OMB's] instructions were consistent with the special message.'' But for these rescissions proposals, OMB flat out refused ``to provide GAO with updated apportionment data that would permit GAO to conduct the same analysis for the President's special message of June 3, 2025.''
This is unacceptable, and it is unlawful. In the FY 2022 and FY 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Acts, when I was chair of the Appropriations Committee, Congress--on a bipartisan basis--required OMB to post apportionments publicly. If OMB were obeying this law, then not only would Congress and the GAO have critical information we needed to consider the rescissions package before us, but the public would have had the critical information they needed to share their opinions with us about the impact of these cuts and any other funds OMB or these agencies may be withholding in violation of the Impoundment Control Act. Congress has required OMB to make this information public, and once again, I urge OMB to comply with the law and do so--now.
And, yes, I know that OMB has made the wrongheaded argument to the Committees that somehow apportionment decisions on congressionally passed and duly enacted appropriations are both legally binding as well as predecisional and deliberative, and that the requirement to post such information is unconstitutional, but that is not so. OMB and Director Vought continue to be deeply confused about the Constitution, the rule of law, and foundational fiscal laws like the Antideficiency Act and the Impoundment Control Act. The Constitution vested the power of the purse in the Congress, not the President, and the Congress assigned the President the responsibility to apportion appropriations to protect Congress's power, not cede it to the Executive Branch. And as the constitutional stewards of the power of the purse, Congress can--through enacted laws--certainly require the apportionment information to be published to the benefit of both the Congress and the public, who deserve access to information about the use of taxpayer dollars.
Finally, I must speak out against the pattern of unlawful impoundment that is being led by OMB Director Russ Vought, who insists that there is somehow a loophole in the Impoundment Control Act that permits the Executive Branch to unilaterally cancel appropriations--that otherwise expire under current law at the end of the fiscal year--by transmitting a special message proposing rescissions late in the fiscal year and withholding the amounts until they can no longer be used. But to quote the late Justice Scalia, the Congress ``does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.'' Indeed, unilateral actions by the Executive Branch that would impound congressionally passed and duly enacted appropriations is the very thing the Impoundment Control Act prohibits.
Director Vought refers to his unlawful maneuver as a ``pocket rescission,'' which is just another name for unlawful impoundment. The December 2018 Government Accountability Office legal opinion (B- 330330), requested jointly by then House Budget Committee Chairman Steve Womack and Ranking Member John Yarmuth, is exactly right though and confirms that the Impoundment Control Act bars this maneuver. The Government Accountability Office stated unequivocally that ``[t]his interpretation would, in effect, give the President power to amend or to repeal previously enacted appropriations merely by calibrating the timing of the submission of a special message'' and that ``[a] withholding of this nature would be an aversion both to the constitutional process for enacting federal law and to Congress's constitutional power of the purse.'' As part of its analysis, the Government Accountability Office reasons that ``[t]he plain language of section 1012(b) provides that absent Congress's completion of action on a rescission bill rescinding all or part of amounts proposed to be rescinded within the prescribed 45-day period, such amounts must be made available for obligation,'' which requires that the ``budget authority must not be expired.'' And I remain in agreement with Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative Hal Rogers, as the Senate Chairman and House Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the Appropriations Committees, when they wrote in 2019 to President Trump that ``[w]e supported the budget deal and did so in good faith. Preventing agencies from obligating such large sums seems an abdication of this bipartisan agreement, and Congress thus expressed strong opposition to this precise exercise last year. Furthermore, the U.S. Government Accountability Office's December 2018 legal opinion concluded that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act does not permit the withholding of funds through their date of expiration and notes the President's responsibility in ensuring prudent obligation of funds.''
Republicans and Democrats alike should reject this ploy for what it is: a direct assault to Congress's Article I power. Allowing any Administration to erase duly enacted funding through procedural delays that amount to unlawful impoundment would destabilize the appropriations process and corrode the separation of powers that the Impoundment Control Act was enacted to defend.
I remind my colleagues that Congress alone holds the power of the purse. It is right there in the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 proclaims that Congress, not the President, determines how the taxpayers' dollars are spent. I urge my colleagues to reject this rule, which would automatically adopt the rescissions package pursuant to the June 3, 2025, special message.
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