Briefly: What is “impoundment.” 13 minutes is not brief
Impoundment is when the Executive declines to spend money that the Congress has appropriated.
Presidents have done this from time to time, arguing that the actual spending of money is an Executive role. Congress got very frustrated with this, and passed legislation constraining the practice in 1974:
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The President blocking spending of money appropriated by Congress.
More brief - Trump keeps on Trumping.
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Impoundment, as said in the piece, is the POTUS refusing to spend money that had been appropriated by Congress. Nixon did that, which caused the passage of a law, in 74. to prohibit it. It’s illegal. But TIG can’t be prosecuted, and Musk isn’t a government employee, so he isn’t accountable either.
Civilized people do what they did in the late 90s, the “pay go” rule: of you want to increase spending, you need to find revenue to pay for it. If you want to cut taxes, you need to specify spending cuts to cover it. So people are held accountable. That all went away with Bush 43. Two rounds of JC tax cuts, with not a nickle of spending cuts to cover the cost. No pain for anyone, so no accountability for the resulting deficit.
Now, Congress cedes budget cutting authority to people who are unaccountable for their actions.
Steve
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I’ve got that video cued up to about 3 minutes of explanation, it starts 13 minutes into the video.
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It has always been the case that the President could disobey the law and not face prosecution while in office. That’s been DOJ policy for many decades. The SCOTUS decision did not affect that, but instead reached the question of whether an ex-President had immunity.
Nor is it at all relevant here. The anti-impoundment act is not a criminal statute, and SCOTUS has consistently held that Presidents and former Presidents are completely immune from civil liability from actions within the “outer perimeter” of their authority:
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/457/731.html
Nothing the SCOTUS has done recently has any bearing on whether Trump would face any personal consequences from impoundment.
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Thank you all for the clarification. Sorry, I got everybody in high dudgeon, heh heh. Actually the first thing I thought of was the Old Tricky Dick gambit but congress passed a law saying he “had to” spend whatever was appropriated because that is what “executive” means, so I was thinking maybe I was missing something. Another “law of the land” and government function that’s nothing more than a gentleman’s agreement and perfunctory expectation with no real requirement to proceed therewith.
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Just saw that Senate DEMs will not provide the votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. So the “impoundment bill” is dead in the water.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/12/trump-presidency-news/
Gov’t shutdown starts Friday.
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Is there anything keeping the Senate Reps from simply changing the filibuster rule? All it takes is a majority vote. I think.
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Right but that won’t happen until after this vote. I expect them to do that next.
The filibuster gives greater power to the small states which are over represented in the Senate. They’d be voting against their interest, but perhaps a Trump/Musk primary threat in the next election is an even greater threat to their job security.
It will be fun to watch.
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I’d have to look it up to be sure, but I think they can only change the rules before the start of a session.
It’s been done, mid-session, with a simple majority vote.
In 2013 the DEMs removed the filibuster from Federal judicial and circuit (appeals) court nominations. In 2017, Mitch McConnell did the same for Supreme Court nominations.
{{ The nuclear option leverages the fact that a new precedent can be created by a senator raising a point of order, or claiming that a Senate rule is being violated. If the presiding officer (typically a member of the Senate) agrees, that ruling establishes a new precedent. If the presiding officer disagrees, another senator can appeal the ruling of the chair. If a majority of the Senate votes to reverse the decision of the chair, then the opposite of the chair’s ruling becomes the new precedent.
In both 2013 and 2017, the Senate used this approach to reduce the number of votes needed to end debate on nominations. The majority leader used two non-debatable motions to bring up the relevant nominations, and then raised a point of order that the vote on cloture is by majority vote. The presiding officer ruled against the point of order, but his ruling was overturned on appeal—which, again, required only a majority in support. In sum, by following the right steps in a particular parliamentary circumstance, a simple majority of senators can establish a new interpretation of a Senate rule. }}
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