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Floor Speech
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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, we will soon be voting on bipartisan appropriations bills. These represent the spending strategy that has been worked out between Democrats and Republicans on the committee.
When I came here as an intern some 49 years ago, Senator Hatfield was very engaged on the Appropriations Committee, and he was later chair. I really enjoyed interning for him and hearing how appropriators really considered themselves as, well, first appropriators before they were Democrats or Republicans and how important it was to forge a vision going forward that addressed the needs in every geographic area of the country, in both rural and urban areas, and to bring in the collective voices of everyone together that would help take the country forward.
When Senator Hatfield was ill and not far from passing from this planet, in the last conversation I had with him, he expressed his concern about the committee losing that sense of bipartisan collaboration, and he mentioned specifically--and he was a Republican-- working with Patty Murray and with a Democrat, Daniel Inouye, as some of his fondest memories.
Thus, when I ran for reelection, it didn't seem very likely I would win, but I said: If I run, can I be in the first group in my class to be appointed to the spending committee, to the Appropriations Committee? Because I know how important a voice on this committee has been for Oregon as to what we need to be done on water systems, both clean water presentation and septic or sewer systems; how important it is on transportation and to tackle many of the needs that we have throughout our forests, both our national forests and our BLM lands--so many concerns that are addressed. The leadership on the Democratic side said yes.
Then, miraculously--it was an easy promise to make because I wasn't likely to win, but you never know what is going to happen, and I ended up here in the Senate. I was appointed to this committee, and I am very pleased to be on this committee.
But I am concerned now that a huge threat exists to further degrade this bipartisan cooperation, and that is that we have this process called rescissions--a fancy term--and it exists from the 1974 bill, the Budget and Impoundment Control Act. It says that a President can send a request to Congress to undo the bipartisan work that was done here by the spending committee, by the Appropriations Committee. That has never been used in this fashion until this year.
Now, it isn't that there haven't been rescissions--rescissions mean repealing former funding decisions--but they have been done by the Appropriations Committee.
So what has been forged together--Democrats and Republicans together, with every geographic area of the country represented--in that bipartisan fashion has for the first time been undone in a partisan fashion.
Now we are hearing that Mr. Vought at the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, is planning to send a rescissions package to us maybe in the middle of August. Why is this important, and why is this a problem and a challenge? It is because he has expounded on a theory that he calls a pocket rescission, and that is, if the fiscal year ends on September 30, which it does, and if he sends it within the last 45 days, he believes that he can thereby, even if we were to meet in September and reject the rescission--that even then, he would be able to use a 45-day pause that is in that 1974 law to not spend the funds that we had directed.
So what does that look like? That looks like a law was passed to spend the funds, but with no change in the law, the President's team stalls until the end of the year, sends in a rescission, and then stalls to the very end of the year and never spends the money. In other words, what was passed into law never happens.
This is a direct attack on the power of the purse, which in the Constitution is allocated to Congress. In that sense, we on the Appropriations Committee are carrying that responsibility, that constitutional responsibility of the power of the purse.
In facing this in the past, the Supreme Court has weighed in twice. The first time was in 1996. Actually, the first time was in 1975. Excuse me. In 1975, the Supreme Court weighed in on the fact that a couple of years earlier, in 1973, President Nixon had frozen, or impounded, funds and not done what Congress had set in a law that had been passed in both Chambers and had been signed by the President.
The Supreme Court said: Hell no. You can't do that. Mr. President, you cannot do that. No President can do that. You have to follow the law. You cannot take the power of the purse.
Then, in 1996, Congress said: Hey, we want to give the President line-item veto.
They passed a law to do so.
The Supreme Court weighed in again and said: Hell no. You have the responsibility under the Constitution of the power of the purse.
So now we are facing the situation in which Mr. Vought is saying: The law is just a suggestion. It is just a ceiling. We can spend less if we want to. We can spend more by transferring funds from one place to the other. The law is just a suggestion.
Well, no, Mr. Vought, it is not just a suggestion, and the President is not a King.
But by doing what he is planning to do with this late rescission, he is basically trying to find a way to, well, run out the tape--``run out the clock'' I guess is the right term--run out the clock and alter the power of the purse.
So I am asking for us to stand together, Democrats and Republicans, and defend our constitutional, bipartisan responsibility and should there be a rescission that comes in in August, for us to come in the first thing in September and vote against it and therefore say no in both Chambers of Congress, thereby sending that message, because that would provide a foundation for us to challenge the strategy Mr. Vought is putting together.
In addition, today, I am asking us to join together, Democrats and Republicans, to say that nothing that is passed by us in the fiscal year 2026 spending bills--nothing that is in those bills will be subject to the 1974 rescission. So this would not be retroactive. It could not at this moment, in this bill, be able to address a possible rescission of funds from 2023 or 2024 or 2025. But we can certainly insulate the funds in 2026 from this partisan attack by the President, this unconstitutional attack by the President.
The first amendment to be up when we convene at 4:15--about 3 minutes from now--will be this amendment to say: Together, Democrats and Republicans, let's defend our constitutional responsibilities, and let's say that nothing we pass in the fiscal year 2026 bill will be subject to that strategy by Mr. Vought and President Trump.
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