May 16, 2024 - Epoch Times
15:00
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| President Trump has proposed a new policy to essentially gut the administrative state. | |
| This new policy centers around a little-known executive power, a power that was used by presidents for well over 150 years before being stripped away a half century ago. | |
| However, according to this new proposal, President Trump said that he would work to claw back what's known as the power of impoundment. | |
| Here's specifically what he said in a relevant part of a speech that he delivered over in the state of New Hampshire. | |
| Today, I'm proposing another new policy that will help us drain the swamp. | |
| To stop Biden's wasteful spending and crippling inflation, I will fight to restore the President's historic impoundment power. | |
| A lot of you don't know what that is. | |
| For 200 years, the President had the right to block unneeded spending and return the funds directly to the Treasury. | |
| They stopped that. | |
| Congress unconstitutionally probably attacked the impoundment power in 1974, but it will come back. | |
| We're going to bring it back, and we will squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy, and we'll, instead of just having to just spend it, Now, if you've never heard of the Presidential Power of Empowerment before, you're not alone. | |
| I'm sure that if I asked a thousand people out there on the street, well, I would be surprised if even a single person knows about this power at all. | |
| And so today, let's go through what this Power of Empowerment is, how it came to be lost, and what it would mean for the country if President Trump was able to restore it. | |
| To start with, let's rewind the clock back about 50 years to the 1970s. | |
| Back then, just like today, the rate of inflation was spiraling out of control. | |
| And as this was happening, the Nixon administration pinned the blame on Congress, or as he referred to it as, the Credit Card Congress. | |
| Essentially, his argument was that it was unfettered congressional spending that was leading to inflation. | |
| And along that line, President Nixon attempted to set a limit on government spending in order to try to curb back this inflation. | |
| In a July 1972 New York Times article, here's how they generally described the situation. | |
| Quote, President Nixon appealed to Congress today to protect the economic interest of all American citizens by enacting a $250 billion spending ceiling and threatened to veto any measure he deemed excessive. | |
| In his message to Congress, Mr. Nixon said that spending for the fiscal year 1973 was already nearly $7 billion higher than he had planned in his budget. | |
| Then they quoted President Nixon as saying the following: "That figure by itself is bad enough, but even more spending appears to be on the way. | |
| The inevitable result would be higher taxes and more income-eating inflation in the form of higher prices. | |
| I am convinced the American people do not want their family budgets wrecked by higher taxes and higher prices, and I will not stand by and permit such irresponsible action to undermine the clear progress we have made in getting America's workers off the inflation treadmill of the 1960s." And so, in short, he was warning Congress to not spend in excess of $250 billion. | |
| However, after Congress ignored his warning and allocated much more spending into the federal budget, President Nixon simply refused to spend the appropriated money. | |
| The money was appropriated by Congress, but the executive branch, i.e. | |
| the Nixon administration, simply refused to spend it. | |
| This was exactly the power of impoundment. | |
| Essentially, he was impounding the money that was allocated by Congress. | |
| The idea behind the power of empowerment is that the budget that's set by Congress is the ceiling. | |
| It's the maximum that the government is allowed to spend in a given fiscal year. | |
| However, it does not mean that the government has to spend that much, only that they can if they want to. | |
| The idea is that the executive branch of government, meaning the White House, still has the discretion as to whether or not to spend the money. | |
| It's a presidential power that's been used for well over 150 years, starting all the way back in the Thomas Jefferson administration. | |
| However, that all changed under Nixon's administration. | |
| That's because, after he was weakened politically by the whole Watergate scandal, President Nixon reluctantly signed a piece of legislation which effectively completely surrendered the power of empowerment for both himself as well as for every single president after him. | |
| Here is how a New York Times article from 1974 described the general situation. | |
| Quote, The article was titled, Congress Gains Wide Budget Role. | |
| President Nixon signed a bill today bringing Congress into the federal budget-making process for the first time and curbing the president's authority to impound authorized funds without congressional consent. | |
| In a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Mr. Nixon signed the Congressional, the Congressional Budget and Empowerment Control Act of 1974. | |
| Then, President Nixon is quoted as saying the following during the actual signing ceremony. | |
| And keep in mind, as you're listening to this statement of Nixon's, that during this very moment in time, he is actively under investigation for the whole Watergate scandal. | |
| And so for him, keeping a positive relationship with Congress is of vital importance. | |
| And here's what he said: "This bill is the most significant reform of budget procedures since Congress began. | |
| It means Congress and the executive will work together to keep down the cost of government and we can help every American family to hold down their budgets." And so, just like that, with the stroke of a pen, President Nixon signed away the power of impoundment, turning the office of the president into essentially just the rubber stamp implementation mechanism for whatever Congress wants. | |
| In a recent interview, here was how Mr. Russ Vought described this action by President Nixon. | |
| And for your reference, if you don't know who he is, Mr. Vought was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Trump. | |
| Indeed, that is a rather apt way to put it. | |
| power was the original sin that ensured that the executive branch no longer plays a meaningful role in the appropriations process. | |
| The power of the purse has become a caricature where rather than setting ceilings, Congress now sets spending floors. | |
| Indeed, that is a rather apt way to put it. | |
| After Nixon signed that bill into law, instead of setting the max ceiling for spending, Congress now sets the minimum floor for spending. | |
| And so, as an example, if Congress allocates $1.4 trillion to be spent in a given fiscal year, that is the absolute baseline amount of spending that will definitely need to happen. | |
| All the office of the president can do is to implement. | |
| He can no longer impound any of that money. | |
| This then led to the multiple situations during Trump's term in office wherein President Trump would sign off on these giant spending bills despite being quote-unquote unhappy about the whole situation. | |
| Here's, for instance, how an article in the Real Clear Wire publication described a typical example. | |
| Quote, Trump promised he would never sign another bill like this again before putting his signature on a quote-unquote crazy $1.3 trillion spending bill in 2018. | |
| Two years later, he signed another omnibus bill, this one worth $1.4 trillion, that he called disgraceful. | |
| Both times, Trump justified voting for the bloated bills conservatives loathed by pointing to increased military spending. | |
| However, if the power of empowerment was restored, it would give US presidents once again the authority to exercise discretion in regards to how much money their administration spends. | |
| And interestingly enough, if you remember back to President Trump's term in office, he actually did do something similar to this, similar to empowerment. | |
| That was when he froze the almost $400 million in foreign aid that was earmarked for Ukraine. | |
| Even though the funds were congressionally appropriated, he decided to freeze them. | |
| And in so doing, President Trump was accused of violating the Congressional Budget and Empowerment Control Act of 1974, the exact one, the exact piece of legislation that was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. | |
| And of course, he was later impeached by the House over a phone call that he had with President Zelensky concerning this particular money. | |
| However, according to Mr. Rosvold, who is again the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Trump administration, this was not technically an impoundment. | |
| Here's specifically what he said regarding the freezing of their Ukrainian funds. | |
| The reason why there wasn't an impoundment was because we did not have the authority to just pocket the money and not spend it. | |
| If a new paradigm was in place, the administration potentially would have the ability to go further and pocket the money. | |
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| And so with all this as the general background, it appears that President Trump is making the restoration of the Presidential Empowerment Authority one of the key platforms that he's running on. | |
| For instance, in a campaign video that he released over on social media, President Trump laid out his plan to restore this authority in order to crush what he referred to as the Deep State. | |
| Here's the relevant part of that video. | |
| ... | |
| years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment. | |
| Very simply, this meant that if Congress provided more funding than was needed to run the government, the President could refuse to waste the extra funds and instead return the money to the General Treasury and maybe even lower your taxes, although we did give you the biggest tax reduction in history. | |
| Thomas Jefferson famously used this power, as did many other Presidents, until it was wrongfully curtailed by the Impoundment Control Act of 1911. | |
| Not a very good act. | |
| This disaster of a law is clearly unconstitutional, a blatant violation of the separation of powers. | |
| When I return to the White House, I will do everything I can to challenge the Impoundment Control Act in court, and if necessary, get Congress to overturn it. | |
| We will overturn it. | |
| I will then use the President's long-recognized impoundment power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings. | |
| This will be in the form of tax reductions for you. | |
| This will help quickly to stop inflation and slash the deficit. | |
| To prepare for this eventuality, on day one I will order every federal agency to begin identifying large chunks of their budgets that can be saved through efficiencies and waste reduction using impoundments. | |
| And so, that is the history of empowerment, how it came to be lost, as well as the new push to restore it, in order to essentially defund the federal bureaucracy. | |
| However, doing this would not be a small feat, because the bill that Nixon signed into law, the Congressional Budget and Empowerment Control Act of 1974, would have to be either repealed by Congress, and good luck getting them to give up any of their power, and so most likely, it would have to be found unconstitutional by the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court. | |
| And so, what would likely need to happen is that a president, like President Trump, would need to try empowerment, he would need to be accused of breaking the law, and then he would need to file a lawsuit which would get taken up by the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court. | |
| And then the highest court in the land would have to ultimately determine whether or not this law was constitutional in the first place. | |
| It would be an interesting process to watch for sure, and it would have very, very far-reaching consequences. | |
| Because if the president is once again given discretion on whether or not to spend the allocated money, well, on the one hand it would be a positive, because it would create a check to balance the power that Congress has in regards to spending. | |
| But, on the flip side, it might grant the office of the presidency too much power. | |
| As an example, what if President Trump decided to take the money that was allocated or appropriated to the so-called Ministry of Truth, the Disinformation Governance Board, and impound it? | |
| He might say that that particular agency is censoring the free speech of Americans, and so despite the fact that Congress did allocate the funds, he was just now willing to dole them out. | |
| You might agree with that decision. | |
| But here's another hypothetical scenario. | |
| What if a president like Joe Biden had that power right now? | |
| Congress, they might pass a law saying that the federal government must fund programs that provide alternatives to abortion. | |
| But Joe Biden might not agree with those programs, and he therefore might just withhold the money from them and essentially starve them. | |
| And so you see, this would be the double-edged blade of impoundment. | |
| It would give US presidents broad authority over what money was actually spent. | |
| Congress would appropriate how much money could be spent on everything, but it would be the president that would decide what is actually spent. | |
| And I would love to know your thoughts. | |
| Do you think that the power of empowerment should be restored? | |
| Do you think that overall it provides a good counterbalance to Congress? | |
| Or do you think that it gives too much power to one single man? | |
| Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below. | |
| I'll be reading through them today as well as later this week. | |
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