[Clear explanation of Trump's Power of Impoundment of money Congress may plan to waste.]
The President’s Constitutional Power of Impoundment
Since the Founding, it has been understood that Article II vests the President with authority to decline to spend the full amount of an appropriated fund. This commonsense power, known as impoundment, was exercised for most of this nation’s history. In 1974, however, at the height of the Watergate scandal, Congress enacted the Impoundment Control Act, which purports to divest the President of his constitutional impoundment authority. This measure reverses an understanding of the Constitution’s allocation of executive and congressional spending authority dating to the Founding. The ICA is unconstitutional.
I. The President’s Article II Impoundment Authority.
A. Article II vests the power of impoundment in the President.
Article II of the “Constitution vests the entirety of the executive power in the President” of the United States.1 “This grant of authority establishes the President as the chief constitutional officer of the Executive Branch, entrusted with supervisory and policy responsibilities of utmost discretion and sensitivity.”2 “The President’s duties are of ‘unrivaled gravity and breadth.’”3 The President “must ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ and he bears responsibility for the actions of the many departments and agencies within the Executive Branch.”4 The President exercises many authorities that are derived “from the Constitution itself.”5 When he exercises such powers, his authority is “conclusive and preclusive,” meaning that “he may act even when the measures he takes are ‘incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress.’”6 “Congress cannot act on, and courts cannot examine, the President’s actions on subjects within his “conclusive and preclusive” constitutional authority.”7
The power of impoundment is one such executive power vested in the President alone by Article II of the Constitution. As discussed below, this power stems from the President’s conclusive and preclusive authorities the Court sets out in the Trump v. United States opinion. -Through impoundment, the President can decline to spend the entire amount of an appropriation. Just as the President has discretion to not enforce every criminal law to the fullest extent,8 the President may make judgments on the extent to which to expend appropriations. Impoundment is simply another word for the President’s Article II authority to implement spending measures enacted by Congress in a responsible manner.– As explained at length elsewhere,9 this power has long been understood to inhere in the executive power vested by Article II, and therefore, it is not constitutionally proper for Congress to seek to abridge this constitutionally vested authority under the Necessary and Proper Clause. The impoundment power is committed to the President’s discretion by the Constitution.
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Foreign Affairs Power & Reception Clause. The President may also impound funds pursuant to his constitutionally based foreign affairs powers.32 International relations are marked by ever-changing circumstances requiring flexibility, secrecy, and dispatch in pursuing the national interest.33 Those circumstances might require impoundment. For example, the President might effectively threaten to withhold funds from international organizations as a bargaining chip to achieve foreign policy interests.
https://americarenewing.com/the-presidents-constitutional-power-of-impoundment/