Trump’s Word Salad
Crazy Fair Warning
You have a bit of it stuck in your teeth.
“We are going to bring back presidential impoundment authority, which nobody knows what it is…. But it allows the president to go out and cut things and save a fortune for our country. Things that make no sense.” Trump at a spring 2024 rally. Reported by Franco Ordonez, 11/26/24 online for NPR.
Graphic credit: Lane & Associates Family Dentistry
Impoundment is when a president effectively holds back money that Congress has approved for a specific purpose.
Trump argues that the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (passed after funding disputes with President Nixon) is unconstitutional.
This notion challenges the traditional separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government.
It also is one of several pretty standard moves in the rise of a tyrant to absolute power.
Trump has nominated Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Vought served in that role during part of Trump’s first term in office. Vought wrote the chapter on executive power in the Project 2025 playbook. He advocates for presidential powers strong enough to take on federal agencies now operating outside of the control of the White House. The Senate must approve his appointment to the post in Trump’s second term.
After being nominated to serve in the second administration, Vought posted on X (formerly Twitter) "There is unfinished business on behalf of the American people, and it’s an honor of a lifetime to get the call again." In an interview with Fox Business, Vought is reported to have said “I believe that the loss of impoundment authority—which 200 years of presidents enjoyed—was the original sin in eliminating the ability from a branch on branch to control spending…And we’re going to need to bring that back.”
Trump tested his impoundment authority during his first term in office, when he briefly blocked military aid funds from flowing to Ukraine—for political purposes that led to his first impeachment. The debate now most likely will flow to the Supreme Court, in which Trump now holds a significant 5-3 voting majority. The Court recently has rendered decisions favorable to Trump on issues related to presidential immunity and the power of a president to remove officials.
Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, notes that Chief Justice Roberts might be sympathetic to arguments of this nature alive when he worked in the Reagan White House. “…I think Trump might actually have a shot at this one.”
What Is the Point?
Glad you asked.
There are several points.
The one most immediately relevant is that keeping Vought from a leadership role at OMB likely won’t stop Trump’s grab for more power than the framers of the Constitution intended. But it will irritate Trump and slow his authoritarian stampede. And it will be robbing Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, as the heads of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, of one of their tools in making drastic cuts to various federal agencies and their workforces.
These gentlemen are charter members in Trump’s Billionaire Buddy Club. Don’t bother with looking for smoke. It’s a blazing dumpster fire of corruption. And contempt.
Who could fail to notice that the acronym for Elon and Musk’s unsupervised organization is DOGE—a cryptocurrency that was created in 2013 as a joke by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus? That peer-to-peer, open-source trading device is ripe for grifting schemes. Google advises that there are analysts who believe that Dogecoins now valued at less than $1.00 each could be reach $4,423 by 2050. Shades of Truth Social and DJT stock values. This guy makes loaves and fishes look like a cheap parlor trick. His eldest son will be working this scheme during the second administration.
We are told that Musk and Ramaswamy will work as “outside of government” advisors on how, as Speaker Mike Johnson phrased their role, to suggest “major reform ideas (to) revive the principle of limited government.”
A lovely example springs to mind. Alexandra Hutzler reported on 11/29/24 that Musk recently proposed deleting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
What could possibly go wrong?
What Action Can Be Taken?
Write and ‘phone and text and email your Senator. Demand a less partisan head of OMB. Cause good trouble.
Prevail.