Key House GOP appropriators are raising concerns about the White House’s use of a legally untested budgetary tool to terminate billions in foreign aid funds as the Supreme Court decides whether to weigh in on a tactic that could overhaul congressional funding power.
Hard-line conservatives have cheered on the Trump administration’s use of a so-called pocket rescission as the White House seeks to cancel the foreign aid funds — money that is now at the center of a legal dispute before the Supreme Court.
Several key Republican appropriators in the House are expressing caution about the long-term implications of the tactic, saying it could be a double-edged sword for Republicans down the line if a Democratic president wishes to target funding liked by conservatives.
In late August, the White House told Congress it was unilaterally terminating $4.9 billion in foreign aid appropriations through a pocket rescission. Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., a longtime appropriator who leads the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee, said he doesn’t agree with the president’s use of a pocket rescission.
“It negates appropriations,” Rogers said. “And I think the Constitution, with the power of the purse resting in the Congress, negates any rescissions.”
Rep. Robert B. Aderholt, an Alabama Republican and House appropriator, said he supports the substance of the rescissions outlined by the White House and thinks the pocket rescission strategy is legal. But he raised concerns about the potential consequences that could come down the road by expanding executive power.
“If a Democrat president tried to rescind something that I felt like was good, that would rub the other way. It’s sort of like the 60-vote rule in the Senate — it’s a double-edged sword,” Aderholt said.
“[The] roles might be reversed at some point, and obviously I would have concerns about that,” he added.
Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla., echoed concerns about a Democratic administration wielding the power of a pocket rescission. Rutherford said he didn’t like the tactic because lawmakers should have to vote on the funding, but he said he doesn’t know if it’s unconstitutional because it’s been used in the past.
“I’d like to see it go to the courts,” Rutherford said. “’Cause I can tell you, I think it does take away one of the great powers of the Congress, and that is controlling the purse strings.”
Those comments come in the wake of strong criticism from Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who have both condemned the pocket rescission strategy.
“Congress alone bears the constitutional responsibility for funding our government, and any effort to claw back resources outside of the appropriations process undermines that responsibility,” Murkowski wrote in a social media post last week.
Collins, in a statement released after the pocket rescission announcement, said it’s an apparent attempt to rescind appropriated funding without the sign-off from Congress.
“Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law,” Collins said in the statement.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said he would rather have lawmakers vote on the funding in the pocket rescission. But he said there’s a legal question at play.
“So it seems to me the courts are probably where that’s going to get settled,” Cole said.
“[I’d] prefer to vote on it, as I said. I think that’s the appropriate thing, but it’s a court decision,” he said.
A case before the Supreme Court has opened the door for the justices to greenlight the administration’s use of a pocket rescission, in a legal dispute over billions in foreign aid funding.
The Supreme Court this week issued an order that paused part of a lower court order requiring the administration to pay some $4 billion of the nearly $5 billion in rescissions that the White House notified to Congress in August.
David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law, said the Trump administration has invited the Supreme Court to rule on pocket rescissions.
But he said the justices could simply rule for the government on procedural grounds.
“Because pocket rescissions rely on reading language into the law that isn’t there, the textualist justices on the Supreme Court are likely to find this a very uncomfortable doctrine,” Super said.
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