{"id":10138,"date":"2025-06-10T20:31:57","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senior-house-republican-sends-warning-to-white-house-on-funding-clawbacks\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:31:57","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:31:57","slug":"senior-house-republican-sends-warning-to-white-house-on-funding-clawbacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senior-house-republican-sends-warning-to-white-house-on-funding-clawbacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior House Republican sends warning to White House on funding clawbacks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

At least one senior congressional appropriator isn\u2019t interested in White House budget chief Russ Vought\u2019s enthusiasm for so-called \u201cpocket rescissions,\u201d which would allow the Trump administration to make permanent cuts to federal spending without congressional approval.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s a bad idea,\u201d Rep. Mike Simpson<\/a> (R-Idaho), chair of the Interior-Environment subcommittee, told reporters Tuesday. \u201cIt undermines Congress’s authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

A pocket rescission is a standard rescission request from the White House to claw back money already approved by Congress, but one that is made with fewer than forty-five days left in the fiscal year. The administration then withholds the funding through Sept. 30, in an attempt to permanently cancel it.<\/p>\n

The Government Accountability Office has concluded that using the maneuver in that way is not true to the law. Yet Vought has repeatedly brought up the concept in television appearances and private meetings on Capitol Hill, touting the pocket rescission as a tool at the administration\u2019s disposal if Congress can\u2019t or won\u2019t greenlight the executive branch\u2019s cancellation of funding that both chambers already approved.<\/p>\n

Simpson said the president needs to evaluate bills that come to his desk as a whole, just like lawmakers have to routinely swallow certain provisions in large pieces of legislation they wouldn\u2019t support as standalone propositions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I’ve been saying is, if the president doesn’t like a bill, he has to look at it just like we do every appropriation bill \u2014 I can find something I don’t like in there. He has to look at it and say, \u2018is it good, is it bad\u2019 \u2014 in total \u2014 and then you have to live with the parts that you might not like,\u201d said Simpson. \u201cThat\u2019s the way it\u2019s supposed to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Congressional Republicans are currently weighing the administration\u2019s first rescissions request of $9.4 billion spending cuts across foreign aid programs and public media. It\u2019s not guaranteed that the package will have the votes for passage, however, and the Trump administration is anticipating that future packages may not be able to win broad support, either.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is not a political will, particularly in the Senate, and then put ourselves in a position where we have lost other executive tools that exist, namely pocket rescissions, to be able to make these cuts permanent without having to get an affirmative vote from the House and the Senate,\u201d Vought told reporters on a recent call.<\/p>\n

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise<\/a> told reporters Tuesday he welcomes more rescissions packages, \u201cbecause clearly, there’s a lot more we want to cut, and I’m sure there’s a lot more they want to cut.\u201d But he didn\u2019t comment directly on the pocket rescission strategy Vought has been touting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re going to have a conversation with [the White House] to talk about what the long term goal is going to be,\u201d said Scalise.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least one senior congressional appropriator isn\u2019t interested in White House budget chief Russ Vought\u2019s enthusiasm for so-called \u201cpocket rescissions,\u201d which would allow the Trump administration to make permanent cuts to federal spending without congressional approval. \u201cI think it’s a bad idea,\u201d Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chair of the Interior-Environment subcommittee, told reporters Tuesday. \u201cIt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}