| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
The COVID-19 that just shows that there's a lot of evidence that was suppressed for a long time and even the media hasn't really been forthcoming with it. | |
| And if you all can do that, we'll get to a place where people can trust experts again. | ||
| So thank you very much, Michigan. | ||
| All right, Alex. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think he makes reasonable points. | ||
| I think there is a severe lack of trust in the public health authorities, largely because of the pandemic response and that transparency, both in public health and really more broadly throughout the health sector will help the American people have more confidence in the recommendations that they get from experts. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Brian Blaise is president of Paragon Health Institute, former White House National Economic Council policy advisor in the first Trump administration. | ||
| You can find his work at paragoninstitute.org. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Bobby Cogan. | ||
| He is Federal Budget Policy Senior Director at the Center for American Progress, formerly advisor to the director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Biden administration. | ||
| Bobby, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mimi, thanks so much for having me on. | |
| So yesterday, the White House rescinded the memo that had frozen all federal grants and loans. | ||
| On Monday night, it had sent out a memo saying that all federal grants, about several trillion dollars, had been frozen. | ||
| Can you bring us up to speed as to what happened and what's happening now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So on day one, the Trump administration proposed kind of a few illegal pauses of some parts of funding, right? | ||
| So some of the Inflation Reduction Act spending, some of the bipartisan infrastructure law spending, and a lot of our foreign assistance. | ||
| And then on Monday, they said, actually, we're going to freeze about a third of the budget, right? | ||
| Grants, loans, and almost all of our federal financial assistance, not Medicare, not Medicaid, and not the things that go directly to people, but all the stuff that filtered through states or authorities or that sort of stuff. | ||
| On Tuesday, they then sent internal guidance to the agency saying, yep, let's carry it out. | ||
| And the agency sent a bunch of emails to all their staff saying, yep, we're carrying this out. | ||
| But then publicly, they started walking back. | ||
| So privately, they were saying, let's go forward. | ||
| Publicly, they walked it back and said, what? | ||
| We didn't mean that. | ||
| We just meant our original day one stuff. | ||
| And then yesterday, they completely rescinded the memo that said, yep, let's do a third of the budget. | ||
| And now they're back to kind of their original illegal pauses. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But the so Caroline Levitt, the spokesperson for the White House, said that the pause itself is still in effect. | ||
| The memo is not. | ||
| But there was a court case and a judge has paused that. | ||
| So what's happening with that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so I have interpreted the way that I kind of square that is that I, because the White House's public stance was that the Monday memo didn't say what we all saw it, you know, read it to say that, you know, that Monday memo said, let's go beyond our initial pauses and instead pause a third of the budget, right? | |
| Pause WIC and Head Start and Snap and that sort of stuff. | ||
| But then publicly, they said, whoa, we're not pausing all of those things. | ||
| We're just doing our original stuff. | ||
| Again, privately, their guidance implied that they, in fact, were going ahead, but their public stance was they weren't doing anything. | ||
| So when Levitt then said, you know, when Levitt said, when they rescinded that Monday memo and Levitt said, well, we're still going ahead, I believe that what she was saying was, yeah, we're still going ahead with our original day one stuff. | ||
| And this was a spin to pretend that they hadn't walked back their Monday stuff. | ||
| Of course, federal judge interpreted differently and said, We now don't know what you're saying. | ||
| So let's just pause everything while we're at it. | ||
| You know, let's put a stay on everything while we're at it. | ||
| But again, I believe that that was all their spin to pretend that they hadn't walked back their Monday order and said, well, our plan was always to just continue pausing our day one stuff. | ||
| And so we're going to continue our day one pause. | ||
| So currently, given the judge's order, Bobby, is everything going forward as usual? | ||
| Are all those expenses going out or are they paused? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So with a caveat that we don't actually know whether they're going to comply with the court order, if they're complying with the court order, the Monday stuff is paused, but the day one illegal actions are continuing, right? | |
| So the foreign assistance pause will still be continuing. | ||
| And then also the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act stuff. | ||
| So that stuff is still ongoing. | ||
| That was, I believe that's what Levitt was referring to. | ||
| But again, the caveat here is that part of the issue is that the White House was giving different information to the agencies and to the public. | ||
| And it's not really clear what, you know, what they're going to follow and what they think they have the authority to do. | ||
| So now the administration had argued that this freeze was necessary because they wanted to make sure that all funding complies with President Trump's agenda. | ||
| You worked for OMB. | ||
| Is this typical when a new administration comes in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it is not. | |
| It's also illegal. | ||
| You are not allowed to pause for policy reasons. | ||
| If you look at in 2020, the Government Accountability Office GAO, which is tasked with determining whether you followed the Impoundment Control Act, when they said that Trump had violated it for his 2019 Ukraine kind of pause, they say very explicitly, you're not allowed to pause for policy reasons. | ||
| So no, this isn't typical. | ||
| And no, this isn't allowed. | ||
| If you don't like a law, you are allowed to try to change it. | ||
| Republicans have a trifecta. | ||
| I would expect a lot of laws to change. | ||
| And in fact, there is a path to legally pause a lot of the money. | ||
| They probably wouldn't have been able to pause all of it. | ||
| But there are paths to legally pause it. | ||
| And there are paths to legally try, like filibuster proof, try to rescind a lot of the money that they might not like. | ||
| But you are not allowed to, just because you don't like it, stop carrying out the law. | ||
| Like that, that you're not allowed to do. | ||
| And we have Bobby Kogan with us for the next 20 minutes. | ||
| If you'd like to call in and ask a question about that federal grant and loan money that has been paused by the administration and the memo that's been rescinded, you can do so. | ||
| It's 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, and 202748-8002 for Independents. | ||
| You mentioned something called impoundment. | ||
| Can you explain what that is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So impoundment is any action or inaction that causes money to not be obligated or spent either temporarily or permanently. | ||
| So it is any way in which you cause some money that is supposed to be obligated or spent to either pause or entirely stop being spent. | ||
| That's what impoundment is. | ||
| It is illegal. | ||
| It was illegal before the Impoundment Control Act existed. | ||
| And then the Impoundment Control Act came in and codified that and kind of actually gave two limited paths to doing it. | ||
| So there were a few sparse court cases before Nixon that were never adjudicated, right? | ||
| Just because the president does something doesn't mean that it's legal. | ||
| You have to, the way you determine whether something's legal is it goes to court. | ||
| And then a judge says, yeah, that's fine or no, that's not fine. | ||
| So, there are a few sparse cases, but Nixon, who Scalia called the Mahatma Gandhi of impounders, Nixon started kind of broadly impounding. | ||
| And then those went to court. | ||
| And before the Impoundment Control Act existed, the court, some cases were ruled non-justiciable because they couldn't find standing. | ||
| But of the cases that were decided on the merits, Nixon lost every single one. | ||
| And it's because the court said, hey, the law says here's the money, and this is what you have to do with the money. | ||
| So he was breaking appropriations law and breaking authorization law. | ||
| And then we passed a law kind of a couple weeks before he left office being like, by the way, this definitely isn't allowed, but if you do want to do it, here are the paths. | ||
| So empowerment, again, is some mechanism through which you are illegally not allowing money to go out. | ||
| And so, as they say, ICA created two paths to legally do it. | ||
| You could call for the money to be peeled back, and then you get to temporarily pause it while you called for it to be peeled back. | ||
| You also could send a special message to Congress listing some, you know, listing some bits of information, including what you're appealing back, how long you want to peel it back for, what the effect would be. | ||
| And then you have to give one of the three justifiable reasons. | ||
| And if you do all that, then you are legally allowed to pause it. | ||
| But President Trump didn't do any of that. | ||
| He didn't transmit a special message, so it's not okay. | ||
| He didn't give the information required in a special message. | ||
| And he didn't pick one of the three justifiable reasons. | ||
| As I said, the government accountability office has said very clearly that I don't like the policy. | ||
| Policy reasons are not a legitimate reason to pause. | ||
| Well, Bobby, unless you repeal the Impoundment Act, which is what President Trump has said he wants to do on the campaign trail. | ||
| And his nominee to lead the OMB is Russ Vogt. | ||
| He has also been a critic of the Impoundment Act. | ||
| What kind of, first do you think it's possible politically that that would be repealed? | ||
| And then what impact do you think that would have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So I would just reiterate that Nixon lost his impoundment cases before the Impoundment Control Act existed. | ||
| I mean, some of them were adjudicated after it existed, but they were all adjudicated on pre-Impoundment Control Act law. | ||
| So it's not, you know, the way that Russ Vogt and Donald Trump speak about this is they say, oh, well, presidents have always had the authority to do this. | ||
| Presidents have been doing it for 200 years. | ||
| Then this unconstitutional law came in and unconstitutionally stopped us from doing it, but we just need to, we, you know, as soon as that goes away, then we can go back to doing it. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| Nixon lost every single case that was decided in the merits. | ||
| So you can't do it because authorizing law says you can't do it. | ||
| You can't do it because appropriations law say you can't do it. | ||
| I don't expect the Supreme Court to overturn the Impoundment Control Act. | ||
| The argument that they are making is that Congress may not bind you on spending. | ||
| It's quite radical. | ||
| They say you can bind someone on revenue, right? | ||
| So they say that tax law is not optional. | ||
| The president doesn't get to pick the tax law. | ||
| They say that they say that criminal law is not optional. | ||
| You don't get to pick whether, you know, kind of the severity of any of the crimes listed or whatever. | ||
| But they say that all spending law is optional. | ||
| That everything is a ceiling. | ||
| You can't spend without it, but it's not a target. | ||
| Congress can't actually mandate it. | ||
| So if Congress says, hey, here's $15 million for a bridge, you're obviously allowed to veto it. | ||
| But what they're saying is that you can sign it into law and then say, that's fine, but I'm going to choose not to do this. | ||
| They say that it would be unconstitutional to say, no, you must do this. | ||
| And what that really means is that anything that is currently bound is also unconstitutional. | ||
| Means Social Security's entitlement is unconstitutional. | ||
| It means Medicare's entitlement is unconstitutional. | ||
| It means Medicaid's entitlement is unconstitutional. | ||
| It means SNAP's entitlement is unconstitutional. | ||
| That the president would always have the authority to say, no, I'm going to give you less because I don't like this. | ||
| That is a very radical belief. | ||
| I don't think Congress would like that because it usurps Congress' role in not just the power of the purse saying, hey, we want to give you money, but in saying, yeah, you actually must do the money that we gave you. | ||
| And so I don't think Congress will like that. | ||
| But as I say, it's so radical. | ||
| I actually can't the caveat that the Supreme Court has found creative ways to interpret the law beyond what many lawyers. | ||
| So, Bobby Kogan, I want to play for you a portion of OMB Director nominee Russ Vogt. | ||
| He was asked in his recent confirmation hearings about this idea of withholding funding that has been appropriated by Congress, and then I'll have you respond. | ||
| Mr. Road, under your leadership in 2019, OMB illegally withheld $214 million that Congress appropriated to the Department of Defense to provide security assistance to Ukraine. | ||
| The Government Accountability Office concluded that OMB's actions were a violation of the Impoundment Control Act and that your actions then forced Congress to reappropriate the funds. | ||
| Just four years ago, you told this very committee that under your leadership, OMB would abide by the Impoundment Control Act. | ||
| However, your past actions and public statements suggest that you may not follow this law in the future. | ||
| So my question for you, sir, is if you are confirmed as OMB director again, do you commit to follow the law and allow OMB to withhold funding from and not allow and not allow OMB to withhold funding from programs that Congress has appropriated? | ||
| Senator, thanks for the question. | ||
| I will always commit to upholding the law. | ||
| I disagree with the characterization of the General Accounting Office. | ||
| My time at OMB, we followed the law consistently, and we will continue to do so. | ||
| So that you can withhold funds that are appropriated by Congress? | ||
| Do you think that's within the law? | ||
| Again, Senator, we did not hold inappropriately funds. | ||
| We were engaged in a policy process with regard to how funding would flow to Ukraine. | ||
| We released the funding by the end of the fiscal year. | ||
| Do you believe the Empoundment Control Act of 1974 is the law of the land that you must follow? | ||
| It is the law of the land. | ||
| As you know, the president has run on that issue. | ||
| He believes it's unconstitutional. | ||
| For 200 years, presidents had the ability to spend less than an appropriation if they could do it for less. | ||
| And we have seen the extent to which this law has contributed to waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| But as it pertains to the parameters of how we would use that, that's something that his team will have to consider when they are confirmed in these roles. | ||
| Bobby Kogan, what do you make of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for letting me respond to that. | |
| I was watching it live and talking to my TV. | ||
| So a couple things. | ||
| Russ Vote says we followed the law because we did release it. | ||
| And that is not following the law, right? | ||
| The law is actually incredibly clear. | ||
| Section 1013 of the Empoundment Control Act says, if you want to defer funding, which is what they did, they didn't call for the rescue. | ||
| They called for a pause. | ||
| It's very clear. | ||
| It says, if you want to defer funding, you must transmit a special message, which they didn't do. | ||
| And then they say, by the way, there are only three acceptable reasons. | ||
| And you heard Russ Vote said, well, we were doing it for policy reasons. | ||
| Policy reasons is not one of the three acceptable reasons. | ||
| That's what GAO actually wrote in its statement. | ||
| So here you can see very clearly Russ Vogt making the argument against himself in his statement. | ||
| He says, but we released it before the end of the year, so we're kosher. | ||
| That doesn't matter. | ||
| You're not allowed to be able to. |