Congress Is Not Optional: When Presidential Power Collides With the Power of the Purse

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — September 22, 2026

The president of the United States runs the executive branch.

He does not run the United States government by himself.

That distinction sounds elementary. Yet it sits at the center of one of the most consequential constitutional disputes of Donald Trump’s second presidency: whether a president may effectively rewrite congressional decisions by refusing to spend money Congress appropriated, dismantling functions Congress created, attaching conditions Congress did not authorize, or otherwise accomplishing administratively what the president could not obtain legislatively.

The Constitution assigns Congress the power of the purse. Article I provides that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law” (U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 7).

Congress writes laws.

Congress appropriates money.

The president executes those laws.

That division is not bureaucratic housekeeping. It is one of the principal mechanisms by which the Constitution prevents the presidency from becoming something resembling elected monarchy.

And during Trump’s second presidency, that boundary has repeatedly been tested.

Congress Controls the Money

The Framers understood something brutally simple about governmental power:

Whoever controls the money controls much of what government can actually do.

Congress therefore received extraordinary fiscal authority. It imposes taxes, borrows money, appropriates funds, establishes federal programs, and determines through legislation what much of the executive branch is legally required or permitted to do (U.S. Const. art. I, §§ 8–9).

The president proposes budgets.

Congress does not have to accept them.

The president recommends policies.

Congress does not have to enact them.

Once Congress passes an appropriations law and the president signs it—or Congress overrides a veto—the resulting statute is law.

A president cannot ordinarily replace it with his preferred budget simply because he believes Congress spent too much money or funded the wrong programs.

That proposition became particularly important after Richard Nixon.

Congress Already Fought This Battle With Nixon

President Richard Nixon asserted broad authority to “impound” funds—that is, decline to spend money Congress had appropriated.

Congress responded with the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

The statute established procedures under which a president may propose delaying or rescinding certain expenditures, while preserving Congress’s ultimate authority over appropriated funds (Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974; U.S. Government Accountability Office [GAO], n.d.).

The principle is straightforward.

A president may ask Congress to cancel spending.

Under appropriate circumstances, the executive may temporarily withhold funds while Congress considers a properly submitted rescission request.

But the president cannot simply substitute his judgment for Congress’s and permanently eliminate appropriations by executive command (GAO, n.d.).

That is exactly why the Impoundment Control Act exists.

It was designed to prevent the executive branch from transforming the congressional power of the purse into a presidential suggestion.

The Trump Administration Has Challenged That Settlement

Trump has made no secret of his view that presidents should possess greater impoundment authority.

His administration has argued for a broader understanding of presidential control over spending and has aggressively sought to reduce or eliminate programs inconsistent with Trump’s priorities.

Some of those efforts have followed the statutory process.

On June 3, 2025, for example, Trump formally transmitted a rescission proposal covering 22 appropriations accounts. GAO reviewed the request and concluded that the proposals were properly classified as rescissions under the Impoundment Control Act (GAO, 2025a).

That example matters because it demonstrates the difference between presidential disagreement with congressional spending and presidential usurpation of congressional spending authority.

The president is allowed to ask Congress to rescind appropriations.

The constitutional problem arises when the executive acts as though congressional approval is unnecessary.

GAO Found Actual Violations

The Government Accountability Office is an independent legislative-branch agency that assists Congress in overseeing federal spending.

Its conclusions are therefore especially important when evaluating claims that the Trump administration unlawfully withheld congressional appropriations.

And GAO has repeatedly concluded that agencies under Trump’s administration violated the Impoundment Control Act.

In June 2025, GAO concluded that the Institute of Museum and Library Services violated the law after an executive order directed the agency to reduce operations and the agency subsequently ceased functions and withheld appropriated money (GAO, 2025b).

This was not merely a political accusation from congressional Democrats.

It was a formal legal conclusion from Congress’s auditing and accountability arm.

GAO emphasized that the Impoundment Control Act permits withholding appropriated funds only under limited circumstances and procedures. It found that IMLS had withheld funds without the required special message to Congress and therefore violated the statute (GAO, 2025b).

That is significant.

Congress created the agency.

Congress appropriated the money.

The executive branch decided to reduce the agency’s functions.

The money stopped flowing.

GAO concluded that the executive branch had violated the law.

Head Start Produced Another Finding

The pattern was not limited to museums and libraries.

Congress appropriated money to the Department of Health and Human Services to operate Head Start programs.

Between January 20 and April 15, 2025, HHS significantly reduced the rate at which Head Start funds were being disbursed compared with the previous fiscal year (GAO, 2025c).

GAO again concluded that the withholding violated the Impoundment Control Act.

The agency later appeared to resume spending at rates more consistent with the prior year, but that did not erase the underlying constitutional question (GAO, 2025c).

Head Start illustrates why disputes over appropriations cannot simply be dismissed as Washington accounting fights.

Congress appropriates money because it intends governmental activity to occur.

When the executive withholds that money, programs do not merely lose numbers on a spreadsheet.

Services stop.

Employees are affected.

Grant recipients wait.

Communities lose resources.

And presidential policy replaces congressional policy without Congress necessarily voting to make that change.

NIH Produced Yet Another Violation

In August 2025, GAO examined funding for the National Institutes of Health.

Congress had appropriated money for NIH research activities.

Following executive orders and subsequent HHS actions, existing grants were canceled and steps necessary for approving new grants were interrupted. GAO concluded that NIH intended to withhold budget authority from obligation and expenditure without following the procedures established by the Impoundment Control Act (GAO, 2025d).

GAO therefore found another violation.

The policy question—whether particular NIH grants were worthwhile—is separate.

Trump may believe certain research should not receive federal money.

Republicans in Congress may agree.

Millions of voters may agree.

But the constitutional remedy is legislation.

Congress can reduce NIH appropriations.

Congress can prohibit particular categories of research.

Congress can reorganize federal agencies.

Congress can abolish programs it previously created.

The president can propose all of those things.

What the executive cannot ordinarily do is behave as though Congress already enacted legislation that Congress never enacted.

FEMA Added to the Pattern

GAO also examined Trump administration actions affecting Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance.

The watchdog concluded that FEMA violated the Impoundment Control Act when it withheld certain fiscal-year 2025 appropriations and that some of the affected funds were legally required to be spent (GAO, 2025e).

GAO separately concluded that withholding involving certain FEMA appropriations from prior fiscal years also violated the Act (GAO, 2025f).

Again, the significance is cumulative.

IMLS.

Head Start.

NIH.

FEMA.

These are different programs administered by different parts of the federal government.

GAO did not find every Trump administration spending action unlawful. Its published decisions include findings of both violations and nonviolations, demonstrating that its analysis has not simply treated every disputed executive action as illegal (GAO, n.d.).

That makes the violation findings more important, not less.

The evidence shows not merely that Trump’s opponents disagree with his budget priorities.

Congress’s own accountability agency concluded in multiple cases that executive agencies unlawfully withheld appropriated funds.

The Administration Has a Constitutional Argument

Trump’s position deserves to be presented fairly.

The administration and its allies have challenged the modern understanding of the Impoundment Control Act and argued that the president possesses constitutional authority to decline certain spending.

Their broader argument rests partly upon Article II.

The president heads the executive branch and must faithfully execute federal law. From this perspective, forcing a president to spend every appropriation exactly as Congress expects could interfere with executive authority and historical presidential discretion.

There are also legitimate administrative reasons why every appropriated dollar is not necessarily spent immediately.

Agencies must manage contracts, grants, staffing, procurement, timing, contingencies, and changing circumstances.

Not every delay is an unlawful impoundment.

GAO itself recognizes this distinction (GAO, n.d.).

The constitutional dispute therefore cannot be reduced to:

Congress appropriated $100; the executive did not instantly spend $100; therefore Trump broke the law.

That would be nonsense.

The real question concerns intentional withholding of funds because the president disagrees with the policy Congress enacted.

That is considerably more serious.

The President Cannot Exercise a Line-Item Veto

There is another useful way to understand the problem.

Congress passes an enormous spending law containing hundreds or thousands of decisions.

A president may dislike many of them.

His constitutional options are substantial.

He can veto the legislation.

He can negotiate before signing.

He can ask Congress for subsequent changes.

He can submit rescission requests under existing law.

What he cannot do is sign the legislation and then effectively announce:

“I will execute the parts I like and cancel the parts I do not.”

The Supreme Court rejected a congressionally created line-item veto in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), holding that the president could not unilaterally cancel portions of duly enacted spending legislation through the mechanism Congress had attempted to provide.

That decision involved a different statutory structure from Trump’s current impoundment disputes.

But its constitutional lesson remains important.

The president executes statutes.

He does not amend them by himself.

Grant Conditions Raise the Same Structural Problem

The conflict extends beyond simply refusing to spend money.

It also concerns whether the executive branch can attach new political or ideological conditions to funds Congress already authorized.

On August 25, 2026, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld significant portions of an injunction preventing the Trump administration from imposing new conditions upon transportation and homelessness grants to state and local governments. The dispute involved conditions connected to immigration enforcement and other administration policies (Reuters, 2026).

The majority concluded that executive agencies had exceeded their authority by attaching sweeping conditions not authorized by Congress. The administration argued for broader executive discretion in administering federal grants, and a dissenting judge agreed with portions of that position (Reuters, 2026).

Once again, the underlying policy preferences are secondary to the constitutional structure.

Congress controls appropriations.

If the executive can rewrite the conditions attached to congressional money after the legislation becomes law, the president can effectively create policy that Congress never approved.

DOGE and the Problem of Reorganizing Government

Trump’s second administration has also pursued sweeping reductions in the federal workforce and aggressive restructuring of agencies.

A president unquestionably possesses substantial authority over executive-branch personnel.

Federal agencies are not constitutionally entitled to remain unchanged forever.

Government can become bloated.

Programs can become obsolete.

Employees can be redundant.

Efficiency is a legitimate presidential objective.

But many federal agencies and offices exist because Congress created them by statute.

That imposes a limit.

The president may administer congressionally created institutions.

He may advocate abolishing them.

He may ask Congress to reduce their budgets.

But where Congress has legally required particular functions to exist, executive restructuring cannot simply make the statute disappear.

GAO’s IMLS decision illustrates the problem directly: an executive order directed reductions, congressionally funded functions ceased, and GAO concluded that the resulting withholding violated federal law (GAO, 2025b).

The constitutional issue is therefore not whether Trump has authority to make government smaller.

He does.

The question is whether he can make government smaller in ways Congress has legally prohibited or refused to authorize.

This Is Where the Impeachment Question Becomes Serious

A single appropriations-law violation does not automatically justify removing a president.

Neither does every adverse GAO determination.

Government agencies sometimes violate appropriations law under presidents of both parties.

Impeachment requires considerably more.

But a systematic presidential policy presents a different problem.

Suppose Congress appropriates money.

The president dislikes the program.

Congress refuses to repeal it.

The executive withholds the money anyway.

GAO says the withholding violates federal law.

The administration continues applying the same theory elsewhere.

The president then claims constitutional authority to disregard the statutory restriction itself.

At that point, Congress must ask whether it is confronting isolated administrative mistakes—or a deliberate presidential theory that Congress’s spending decisions are subordinate to presidential preferences.

That is the difference between ordinary statutory violations and a potential abuse of constitutional power.

High crimes and misdemeanors historically encompass serious abuses of governmental authority and attacks upon the constitutional structure, not merely violations of the criminal code (Congressional Research Service, 2025).

A president who systematically attempts to seize Congress’s constitutional authority could therefore present an impeachment question even if no ordinary criminal prosecution were possible.

Congress Has to Defend Its Own Power

This is the uncomfortable part.

Congress cannot complain indefinitely that presidents are taking congressional power while repeatedly allowing presidents to take it.

The legislature possesses formidable constitutional weapons.

It writes laws.

It controls appropriations.

It conducts oversight.

It issues subpoenas.

The Senate confirms major executive appointments.

Congress can enact restrictions.

And ultimately, the House possesses the power of impeachment while the Senate possesses the power to try impeachments (U.S. Const. art. I, §§ 2–3).

Those powers mean little if Congress refuses to use them.

Every president naturally seeks greater freedom of action.

That is not unique to Trump.

Presidents of both parties have expanded executive authority.

Congress has frequently tolerated that expansion because legislators sometimes prefer avoiding responsibility for difficult decisions.

But institutional surrender accumulates.

Power surrendered by one Congress does not automatically return to the next.

The Cost of No Accountability

Imagine a future president confronting a Congress controlled by the opposing party.

Congress passes a budget.

The president dislikes half of it.

So the president simply refuses to spend the money.

Congress protests.

The president says his constitutional authority permits it.

Congress passes another law directing the expenditure.

The president ignores that too.

Eventually Congress’s power of the purse exists only when the president agrees with Congress.

At that point Congress no longer controls federal spending.

The president does.

Now expand the principle.

Congress creates an environmental agency.

A future president dislikes environmental regulation and effectively dismantles it without legislation.

Congress creates a civil-rights office.

Another president eliminates its practical ability to operate.

Congress funds reproductive-health programs.

A conservative president refuses to spend the money.

Congress funds border enforcement.

A progressive president refuses to spend the money.

Congress funds weapons for an ally.

The president withholds them.

Congress prohibits money from being used for a particular purpose.

The president spends it anyway.

Political affiliation becomes irrelevant once the constitutional rule disappears.

Every president inherits the precedent.

That is why Republicans should care about executive encroachment while a Republican occupies the White House.

That is why Democrats should care about it when a Democrat does.

The Constitution does not say Congress controls spending only when the president finds congressional decisions reasonable.

Congress is not an advisory committee to the presidency.

It is a separate branch of the United States government.

The danger of Trump’s current approach is therefore larger than any museum grant, research program, Head Start payment, FEMA allocation, or federal employee.

The danger is the normalization of a simple proposition:

The president decides which acts of Congress deserve to become reality.

Once that principle takes hold, legislation becomes conditional upon presidential cooperation even after it has become law.

That changes the constitutional system.

The question for impeachment is whether Trump’s actions represent ordinary disputes over executive discretion or a deliberate, sustained attempt to appropriate powers that the Constitution assigns to Congress.

GAO’s repeated findings establish that the question cannot simply be dismissed as partisan speculation (GAO, 2025b, 2025c, 2025d, 2025e, 2025f).

Congress now has to decide what those findings mean.

Because congressional authority ultimately survives only if Congress is willing to defend it.

References

Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998).

Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Pub. L. No. 93-344, 88 Stat. 297.

Congressional Research Service. (2025). Impeachment and the Constitution (R46013). U.S. Congress.

Reuters. (2026, August 25). Trump cannot impose conditions on transportation, homelessness grants, U.S. appeals court rules.

U.S. Constitution, art. I, §§ 2–3, 8–9; art. II.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (n.d.). Impoundment Control Act.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2025a, June 17). Impoundment Control Act of 1974: Review of the President’s special message of June 3, 2025 (B-337581).

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2025b, June 16). Institute of Museum and Library Services—Applicability of the Impoundment Control Act to reduction of agency functions (B-337375).

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2025c, July 23). Department of Health and Human Services—Application of Impoundment Control Act to availability of Head Start program funds (B-337202).

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2025d, August 5). Department of Health and Human Services—National Institutes of Health—Application of Impoundment Control Act to availability of funds for grants (B-337203).

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2025e, September 15). Department of Homeland Security—Application of the Impoundment Control Act to Federal Emergency Management Agency fiscal year 2025 federal assistance appropriations (B-337204.1).

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2025f, September 29). Department of Homeland Security—Application of the Impoundment Control Act to Federal Emergency Management Agency prior year federal assistance appropriations (B-337204.2).