President Trump’s move last week to unilaterally cancel $810 million in funding violates Congress’s constitutional power over spending, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday in a letter to congressional leaders.
Trump last week sent a letter to Congress proposing 11 cuts across various departments, mostly focused on programs and services for immigrants and minorities as well as climate efforts. Most of the cuts, $567 million, involve funding for the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services.
This type of request to cancel congressionally approved spending is called a rescission, though when the request is delivered to Congress just before the end of the fiscal year, leaving lawmakers little time to act, it is known as a pocket rescission.
Appropriators in both parties blasted the White House’s latest cuts, and GAO, an independent, non-partisan government watchdog agency, had previously said that a president’s use of such pocket rescissions is unlawful.
In GAO’s latest letter, the agency’s general counsel, Edda Emmanuelli Perez, reiterates that finding, writing that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, or ICA, does not allow the president to withhold budget authority through its expiration date.
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse, and Congress did not cede this important power through the ICA,” the letter says. “The ICA permits only the temporary withholding of budget authority and provides that unless Congress rescinds the amounts at issue, they must be made available for obligation. The President cannot rely on the authority in the ICA to withhold amounts from obligation, while simultaneously disregarding the ICA’s limitations.”
Perez added that the plain language of the 1974 law as well as its legislative history, Supreme Court precedent and the broader constitutional framework all support the GAO’s view that the proposed cuts can’t go through unless Congress completes action on a bill rescinding the funds.
“As a result, the rescission proposals contained in the President’s September 25, 2026, special message to Congress do not permit the President to withhold the appropriations beyond the end of fiscal year 2026,” Perez wrote, adding, “Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse.”
Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, called on Congress to pass a bill he has proposed to prevent the president from rescinding funds without congressional approval. The bill would require the White House budget office to release appropriated funds at least 90 days before they expire.
“He isn't a king — he can't cancel programs created by law and spend your tax dollars on whatever he wants,” Boyle said. “Congress must pass my Congressional Power of the Purse Act to stop his illegal power grabs.”
The White House insists that its rescissions are legal, and Russ Vought, the White House budget director, attacked GAO as “hyper partisan” in a social media post Tuesday.
“Not a surprise,” Vought wrote on X. “GAO has become hyper partisan and Congress recently attempted to cut their spending because of it. GAO changed its long-time opinion on this very issue from the 1970s when they specifically noted the tool was available to the president. They make their legal assessments based on whether Democrats are in the White House.”
Will the courts decide this legal issue? The Supreme Court last year allowed $4 billion in foreign aid funds to be cut under a previous Trump pocket rescission, though it did not decide more broadly about the legality of pocket rescissions.
Politico’s Jennifer Scholtes notes that a legal challenge to Trump’s latest cuts may not be so simple.
“Some federal judges have concluded that only the head of GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions, since that legislation tasked the watchdog with tracking cash the executive branch spends and challenging any illegal withholding of federal dollars on Congress’ behalf,” Scholtes writes. “But GAO has not taken legal action against Trump, even after repeatedly concluding that the administration has illegally impounded federal dollars during the president’s second term. The watchdog has been operating without a Senate-confirmed leader since former Comptroller General Gene Dodaro retired in December.”