President Donald Trump reportedly has notified Congress of his intent to use a rarely invoked power to cancel nearly $5 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid.
Trump intends to use a “pocket rescission,” which has been invoked only in limited circumstances during the past half-century, to cancel funding that, according to the New York Post, includes:
- $3.2 billion in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) development assistance.
- $322 million from the USAID-State Department Democracy Fund.
- $521 million in State Department contributions to international organizations.
- $393 million in State Department contributions to peacekeeping activities.
- $445 million in separately budgeted peacekeeping aid.
Initiatives the Trump administration has deemed wasteful include $24.6 million for “climate resilience” in Honduras and $3.9 million to promote democracy among LGBT people in the Western Balkans, the Post reported. There’s also $2.7 million for a South African organization that published inflammatory racial articles including “The Problem with White People.”
The president on Thursday night informed lawmakers of his intention to cancel the funds, the outlet added.
Trump notified Congress after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier in the day lifted an injunction and allowed the president to proceed in attempting to use a pocket rescission.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) paused the spending earlier this year, but a lawsuit filed by the Global Health Council then put the rescission in limbo.
The pocket rescission is a request presented to Congress submitted so late in the fiscal year that the funds lapse regardless of whether lawmakers act on it.
During the first Trump administration, the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) ruled that pocket rescissions are unlawful. However, OMB Director Russell Vought has mentioned using “all manner of provisions” to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending, The New York Times reported in June.
Vought and General Counsel Mark Paoletta have pointed out that Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter arguably made pocket rescissions in the 1970s.
“Carter sent several rescission proposals to Congress in July of 1977. Funds from two of those proposals lapsed on September 30, 1977, in one case prior to the expiration of the 45-day ICA withholding period, and in another case five days after the withholding period ended,” Paoletta wrote in a 2018 letter to the GAO, the Post reported.
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