{"id":20955,"date":"2026-04-04T14:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T14:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/paradigm-shift-how-trumps-budget-request-will-keep-everyone-guessing\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T14:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T14:02:12","slug":"paradigm-shift-how-trumps-budget-request-will-keep-everyone-guessing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/paradigm-shift-how-trumps-budget-request-will-keep-everyone-guessing\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Paradigm shift:\u2019 How Trump\u2019s budget request will keep everyone guessing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In the wonky world of federal budgeting is the most tired cliche of all: The president proposes, and Congress disposes.<\/p>\n

In other words, any White House budget request<\/a> is nothing more than a political draft that\u2019s ultimately going to be significantly altered \u2014 or torn to shreds \u2014 by lawmakers who hold the constitutional power of the purse.<\/p>\n

But this administration\u2019s moves to wrest spending authority away from Congress have turned that dynamic on its head. A year of funding clawbacks, shutdowns and Supreme Court challenges has changed the way many in Washington are looking at President Donald Trump\u2019s budget plan released Friday. Ultimately, even if Congress refuses to approve Trump\u2019s latest funding wishes, the administration may implement many of them anyway.<\/p>\n

Plus, it\u2019s not just Congress and the White House involved in the budget conversation right now \u2014 everyone is still waiting to see if the Supreme Court weighs in on the legality of the so-called pocket rescissions that Trump employed last year to circumvent Congress and unilaterally cancel nearly $5 billion in foreign aid spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard enough to get 12 appropriations bills done and even harder when you\u2019re not sure if the deal that you strike is even a deal,\u201d said Joe Carlile, an associate director at OMB during the Biden administration and longtime House Appropriations aide who now runs Bluestem Consulting.<\/p>\n

The pocket rescissions gambit refers to occasions where an administration sends Congress a list of previously-approved funding to eliminate with less than 45 days to go until the end of the current fiscal year, then \u201cpockets\u201d \u2014 or withholds \u2014 that funding until a new fiscal year begins, at which point it is considered expired.<\/p>\n

Though the Supreme Court, in a preliminary decision last fall, allowed the Office of Management and Budget to proceed with canceling the foreign aid funding, justices haven\u2019t yet weighed in on the larger pocket rescissions question. That could only empower Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, certainly the most powerful OMB director in recent memory, in his approach and the expansiveness of his mandate.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder President Trump\u2019s bold leadership, every tool in the executive fiscal toolbox has been utilized to achieve real savings,\u201d Vought wrote in an introduction to the administration\u2019s newest fiscal framework.<\/p>\n

\u201cA historic paradigm shift in the budget process is occurring and is producing real results for the American public,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

These days, Vought\u2019s aggressive use of his budget tools looms over every budget debate and document, including the one released Friday. Vought\u2019s proposal asks Congress to approve a massive $1.5 trillion defense request as well as a $73 billion cut to domestic programs, including many that lawmakers refused to cut last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the Administration\u2019s focus on nondefense discretionary spending reductions, most budget analysts assume that this would be the target of rescissions if they were unsuccessful in the appropriation process,\u201d said G. William Hoagland, a senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center who spent decades on Capitol Hill as a senior Republican budget aide. \u201cIt does change the way we look at the request.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another power move Friday, the Trump administration is asking Congress to ram through $350 billion in defense spending to assist Iran conflict through the party-line budget reconciliation process as an end-run on the Senate filibuster. That recommendation would upend one of the last bipartisan traditions<\/a> on Capitol Hill: funding the government through the dozen annual government funding bills.<\/p>\n

The proposal has Democrats and Washington lobbyists now closely watching the budget proposal and OMB\u2019s current spending moves for signs of what the White House may try to muscle through, rescind or delay next \u2014 and how they should approach Appropriations Committee markups later this year in the House and Senate.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, less than a year after Elon Musk and DOGE rampaged through the federal bureaucracy, the government \u2014 just five months past its last major shutdown \u2014 remains in the grip of a partial closure, with a deal to fully open the Department of Homeland Security still on the table.<\/p>\n

Congressional appropriators have sought to assert their independence in previous budget battles. Still, their power has been declining for the better part of three decades now \u2014 and the way Washington budgets seems increasingly disrupted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the Administration proposes a budget, Congress holds the power of the purse,\u201d Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins<\/a> (R-Maine) said in a statement Friday.<\/p>\n

True, but who \u201cdisposes\u201d is as unclear as ever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wonky world of federal budgeting is the most tired cliche of all: The president proposes, and Congress disposes. In other words, any White House budget request is nothing more than a political draft that\u2019s ultimately going to be significantly altered \u2014 or torn to shreds \u2014 by lawmakers who hold the constitutional power […]<\/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-20955","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\/20955","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=20955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}