If All This Sounds Delusional, That’s Because It Is

Opinion|If All This Sounds Delusional, That’s Because It Is

Donald Trump is waging war on the American system of government.

On Monday afternoon, his Office of Management and Budget ordered a pause on nearly all grants, loans and other forms of federal assistance, affecting as much as $3 trillion in funds including cash for education, disaster relief, small business loans and hundreds of billions of dollars in grants to state, local and tribal governments. Countless organizations, from research universities to women’s shelters, were left adrift, scrambling for answers.

The only real explanation, from the O.M.B. memo, was that this was a necessary step to root out the malign influence of “Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering policies” from government. If this sounds delusional, that’s because it is. But now, it seemed, millions of Americans would have to suffer while the president’s apparatchiks chased down the specters of their fevered imaginations, confident that they’d find the source of their cultural alienation in the disbursement of funds to a veterans’ suicide hotline or free lunch for low-income school children.

On Tuesday, 23 attorneys general sued the Trump administration in an effort to block the freeze, and a federal judge issued an administrative stay to preserve the status quo until next week, as initial litigation begins to play itself out. Democrats have also condemned the White House, with some Senate Democrats suggesting something like a slowdown of all business if the White House does not relent.

For now, the freeze is, well, frozen. But however this ends, it should be emphasized that Trump has done more than spark a fiscal and political crisis; he has sent us headlong into another constitutional crisis.

The president of the United States has no legal authority to place a blanket hold on Congressional appropriations. It is true that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act creates a process by which the executive can request a rescission of appropriated funds. The law also permits the president to defer spending under a specific set of particular circumstances: to provide for contingencies, for example, or to take advantage of operational efficiencies. Even then, the president must notify Congress with a message that states both the amount and duration of the deferral, as well as the reasons for it.

Any attempt to impound funds outside of the parameters set out by the act is illegitimate for the simple reason that the Constitution gives Congress the full and unambiguous power of the purse. It is, in fact, the first power enumerated under Article I, Section 8 — “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.”