Impoundment

Our Founding Fathers crafted our government to be small.  Not so small and ineffectual as the one under the Articles of Confederation (which the Constitution replaced) even so, limited.  In the century and a half leading up to just before the Great Depression, federal spending consistently hovered-around 3% of GDP; evidence of a constrained government.  With the passage of time things changed.

In an effort to limit patronage and corruption the civil service system was created in 1883.  With the exception of a wartime economy government continued to remain limited in both size and power.  Nevertheless, with the best of intentions, a small bureaucracy was born.

The arrival of Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933 gave rise to a vast collection of regulatory agencies, government-supported recovery programs and creation of various federal safety nets.  Considering the magnitude of a decade-long depression most of this was welcomed by a beleaguered citizenry. And the administrative state grew.

Fast forward to nowadays.  Several generations had come and gone since WWII and all the while government had grown larger.  Allow me to introduce you to the power of impoundment. 

In the simplest of terms an impoundment is any action – or inaction – by an officer or employee of the federal government that precludes federal funds from being obligated or spent, either temporarily or permanently.  Presidents dating back to Jefferson had periodically wielded the impoundment power.  

Naturally, Congress holds the legislative power of the purse.  It is the prerogative of Congress to hand the president a purse full of money; but not the capacity to compel the president to spend the entirety of the contents of the purse.  Presidents retained executive discretion in that regard. 
In 1974, Congress passed a law with the intent to limit the president's power of impoundment. 

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 created procedural mechanisms by which the Congress considers and reviews executive branch withholdings of budget authority.  It requires the President to report promptly to the Congress all withholdings of appropriations and to abide by the outcome of the congressional impoundment review process. 

Although the basic framework of the act is sound, it set the table for a clash between the three branches of government - Executive, Legislative and Judicial. The Founding Fathers May have been prescient.

Enter the Unitary Executive Theory; a Constitutional law theory according to which the President of the United States has sole authority over the executive branch. It is an expansive interpretation of presidential power that aims to centralize greater control over the government in the White House.

The Executive Branch of the government exists because of Article II of the Constitution, which vests executive authority with the president.  Yeah, in a very short period of less than a month our new president has cut spending authorized by Congress.  Some are sore about this sudden turnabout.  Consider this; if a president is to have reign over the executive branch, has he the authority to eliminate the positions needed to spend that money?  Or can Congress or unelected judges force him to spend it by essentially commandeering executive power?

Therein lies the rub.

This is not rocket science.  If Congress passed a law last year saying money should be spent this year, then it might come as a surprise that a new president can just cancel that spending.  It is already impacting local government where I live.  The seeming abruptness of this is we haven’t had a president in fifty-plus years willing to fully test the limits of their constitutional authority, including impoundment. 

It's still very early in the game and the president has flooded the zone with enough sound and fury as to make one's head spin.

We'll have to wait a bit to see how this plays-out.  Only time will tell.

You're welcome......