February 13, 2025

FLASHBACK: The Next POTUS Should Reclaim The Constitutional Spending Power Congress Stole.

Enacted in 1974, the ICA made it unlawful for the president not to spend every dollar Congress appropriated regardless of whether he needed to use all the funds. This law went against 200 years of history in which both Congress and the president agreed he was not required to spend every dollar of an appropriation if he could carry out a program for less money and even, in many cases, if he disagreed with the program itself.

Appropriation laws were always meant as a ceiling, not a floor. Stretching back to our English forebears, the British Parliament used the legislative power of the purse to make it unlawful for the king to incur obligations that exceeded the appropriations provided. No one wants to incur debts they can’t pay. Parliament worried about the king spending more money than provided, not less.

That was the case in our new republic, and our founding era is replete with examples of presidents not spending the full amount of appropriated funding. The most famous early impoundment precedent came in 1803 when President Jefferson impounded a congressional appropriation of $50,000 for 15 gunboats for use on the Mississippi. The impoundment was on pure policy grounds: Jefferson did not want to provoke France during the secret negotiations over access to New Orleans and the purchase of the Louisiana Territory. Once the purchase was completed, Jefferson spent the funds.

Today:

Endorsed.

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green