Three things you need to know about Trump’s “pocket rescission” proposal
With only weeks to spare at the end of fiscal year 2025, the Trump administration sent Congress a proposal to rescind $4.9 billion in funding under the Impoundment Control Act and withheld that funding until it expired. Now, the president has pulled an even more brazen version of this stunt, sending Congress a proposal to rescind funds for programs supporting refugees and asylees, minority business development, housing counseling assistance and others, mere days before the $810 million proposed for rescission is set to expire. With five days left in the fiscal year and one chamber already adjourned until after the midterm elections, the president did not even pretend that he was sending this proposal for Congress’s genuine consideration, stating that the administration was “utilizing a pocket rescission” to claw back funds appropriated by Congress.
The move follows legal challenges to the administration’s other attempts to dismantle or freeze funding for some of the affected programs, and the president also made clear that the funds he wants to get rid of do not align with his policy preferences or priorities, explaining that rescinding the funds would be consistent with his budget proposals, prevent the use of funds “counter to” his executive orders, and align with the administration’s goals. But none of these reasons can counteract the duly enacted laws providing this funding.
When the administration attempted to use this tactic to rescind funds in fiscal year 2025, members on both sides of the aisle objected, explaining that it was unlawful, subverted Congress’s power of the purse, and undermined the ability of legislators to negotiate, collaborate, and avoid a government shutdown. Unsurprisingly, when the fiscal year came to a close, the government did just that, shutting down for—at the time—the longest period in U.S. history. Over the past few days, members have again responded swiftly to the administration’s attempt to unilaterally cancel these funds, with top appropriators underscoring the illegality of this action and vowing to address it.
Beyond the practical implications the president’s effort raises for Congress’s ability to effectively fund the government, there are three things the public needs to know: (1) withholding funds until they expire is illegal; (2) although the Supreme Court issued a shadow docket ruling on a related issue last year, it has not ruled on the merits of this question; and (3) the fact that so many funds remained unobligated this late in the fiscal year is a problem in and of itself.
1. Does the Impoundment Control Act allow Trump to unilaterally cancel appropriated funds? No.
As the Government Accountability Office (GAO), former appropriations and budget committee leaders, appropriations law scholars and funding experts have explained, neither the Constitution nor the Impoundment Control Act allows the executive branch to withhold funds through their date of expiration. CREW outlined this legal framework in an amicus brief filed on behalf of Representative Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, explaining why the plain text of the ICA—which provides that funds proposed for rescission must be made available for obligation (that is, for legal commitments such as orders for goods or services, grants, or contracts) if Congress does not pass a bill rescinding the funds—requires that funds be released before they expire, and why Supreme Court precedent prohibits this unconstitutional action by the president. GAO reiterated these principles in reviewing the president’s recent rescission proposal, unequivocally stating that “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.”
Even the phrase “pocket rescission” is a misnomer: A rescission is defined as “[l]egislation enacted by Congress that cancels the availability of budget authority previously enacted before the authority would otherwise expire.” By contrast, withholding funds through their expiration date is not a rescission, but an attempt to unilaterally cancel funds in an unconstitutional end-run around the legally required process.
2. Has the Supreme Court said that pocket rescissions are allowed? No.
The Supreme Court has not ruled on this issue. The so-called fiscal year 2025 “pocket rescission” of foreign aid funding faced immediate legal challenges, and a district court issued an injunction requiring the executive branch to obligate the funds that the president had proposed for rescission before they expired. As the court explained, “absent Congress acting to rescind the appropriations, nothing in the ICA permits [the government] to withhold congressionally appropriated funds to run out the clock.”
The Supreme Court ultimately granted a stay of that decision on the shadow docket, but emphasized that the relief reflected the Court’s “preliminary view” and that its order “should not be read as a final determination on the merits.” This past Friday, the district court issued another decision in which it kept alive the plaintiffs’ claims challenging the administration’s attempt to cancel funds through the 2025 “pocket rescission,” explaining that it took “what the Supreme Court sa[id] seriously and [did] not read its order as a binding resolution of the merits after the court repeatedly and expressly cautioned otherwise.”
3. Should there be this many funds left at the end of the fiscal year? No.
By this point in the fiscal year, in general agencies already should have obligated, or should have a plan to “prudently obligate,” their funds before they expire. Yet for several accounts in the president’s proposal, the administration is proposing to rescind a significant amount of the funds appropriated for that account, including nearly the entire balance of the expiring funds in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Counseling Assistance account, funds appropriated for International Education and Foreign Language, Domestic Programs in the Department of Education, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Alternatives to Detention Case Management pilot program, and the Citizenship and Integration Grant Program.
In hindsight, the fact that the administration apparently has withheld these funds throughout the fiscal year should come as no surprise. In his fiscal year 2026 budget request, the president did not request new funding for, requested reduced funding for, or proposed eliminating several programs in the rescission proposal. And for others, the administration issued a fiscal year 2026 apportionment (that is, a legally binding document issued by the Office of Management and Budget that sets a pace for agency spending based on time, activity, or both) for these accounts that either prevented the agency from spending a disproportionate amount of funds until late in the fiscal year, included language purporting to require the agency to comply with the terms and conditions of an executive order, required the agency to comply with terms and conditions in a separate spend plan or apportioned funds as “unallocated” and, thus, unavailable for obligation or expenditure.
By design, the ICA enhances transparency by giving Congress and the public unique insight into precisely how many funds the administration is proposing for rescission. And the public availability of apportionments shows whether the administration, as here, is attempting to use that process to withhold funds through their date of expiration. But these accounts are not the only ones for which the administration has attempted to withhold funds throughout the fiscal year, nor the only for which millions of unobligated dollars may expire on September 30. Last fiscal year, for example, the Department of Education let more than $75 million in unobligated funding expire while the public debated the legality of the president’s so-called “pocket rescission” of foreign aid funds. The end of the fiscal year requires a “yes, and” response: Yes, Congress must address the administration’s unlawful attempt to effectively cancel funds under the ICA, and it also must address any other unlawful attempt to withhold funds it has not proposed for rescission.