DOGE should begin by proposing to eliminate funding that furthers only local rather than truly national interests.
President Donald Trump is determined to tame the bloated bureaucracy beast. To that end, he has appointed, in spectacular fashion, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head up a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (“DOGE”). In their pathbreaking op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Nov. 20, Musk and Ramaswamy laid out their mission: “We won’t just write reports or cut ribbons, We’ll cut costs.”
With the nation now $36 trillion in debt — or about $100,000 for every man, woman, and child in America — that mission is long overdue. But judging from the hyperbolic reaction even the mention of budget cuts has generated in the deep state and among its sycophants in the corporate media, Musk and Ramaswamy will face enormous headwinds.
One of those will undoubtedly be the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Enacted in the wake of President Richard Nixon’s attempt to “drain the swamp” a half century ago, the act requires the president to seek and obtain Congress’s approval before declining to spend appropriated funds — which kinda defeats the purpose of impounding excessive spending that Congress itself enacted. Section 1012 of the act voids any presidential rescission of funding unless Congress votes on a rescission bill within 45 days of being notified of the president’s intent to rescind funds.
Because several court decisions dating back to the 1970s and 1980s ordered presidents to spend appropriated funds unless Congress approved of the impoundment — rejecting claims that the act unconstitutionally intruded on the president’s authority — one might be tempted to think that the act is more like a brick wall than a headwind for DOGE’s mission. But that would be wrong. None of those cases addressed the key constitutional issue, namely, whether the president could refuse to expend funds that exceeded Congress’s authority under the “spending power,” as that power was originally conceived.