Trump Cuts $5B in Foreign Aid Using Rare ‘Pocket Rescission’ – Not Seen Since 1977
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump revived a legal maneuver — unused for nearly half a century — to cancel nearly $5 billion in foreign aid and peacekeeping funds.
The president informed Congress late Thursday that he would proceed with what is known as a “pocket rescission,” a tactic that allows a president to present a funding clawback so late in the fiscal year that Congress has little chance to stop it, according to exclusive reporting from the New York Post.
The move has not been attempted since 1977.
The aid package, originally destined for nonprofits and foreign governments, had been frozen in litigation until the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction earlier in the day.
That ruling cleared the way for Trump to strike the funds, The Post reports, which include $3.2 billion in USAID development assistance and nearly $838 million in peacekeeping contributions.
Among the items highlighted by the administration as examples of waste, the outlet details, are $24.6 million for “climate resilience” in Honduras, $2.7 million for the South African Democracy Works Foundation and $3.9 million to promote democracy among LGBT people in the Western Balkans.
The legality of Trump’s manoeuvre is on shaky ground. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’s own watchdog, has long argued that pocket rescissions are illegal under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which limits a president’s ability to unilaterally block spending.
But Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought and General Counsel Mark Paoletta have noted in the past that Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter set precedents in the 1970s.
Post reporter Steven Nelson added that former White House counsel Mark Paoletta has gone so far as to claim the GAO only changed its view during Trump’s first term out of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
The agency is the only body with standing to sue, though the outlet noted it’s uncertain whether it will act, given simmering challenges to the GAO’s own constitutional status.
Still, Punchbowl News founders John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman warned the move could “lead to a shutdown” next month.
