Rescission package threatened

According to news reports, several Republican Senators in Washington have been wondering: "Why hand Democrats a campaign talking point? This is political poison and self-inflicted pain." What were they talking about? Was it another unqualified nominee to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs? Was it the admission by Rudolph Giuliani, Trump's latest Russian investigation attorney, that, yes, the president had reimbursed Michael Cohen, his personal attorney-fixer, for hush money payments to Stormy Daniels?

No, Republican Senator agitation in this instance is the Administration's proposal to rescind, or cut, nearly $7 billion from the Children's Health Insurance Fund, the CHIP program. This rescission proposal came about because of conservative Republican disgust with the $1.3 trillion government-wide spending bill signed by President Trump just hours after he had tweeted a threat to veto the very same measure.

Immediately after signing the bill, Trump threatened to propose a rescission package worth $60 billion-all of which would come from non-defense spending in the bill just agreed to by Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress. How is this playing out in Congress? More on that, after a brief history lesson.

What is a rescission of federal spending authority? While the Constitution clearly gives the "power of the purse" to the Congress (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7), presidents as far back as Thomas Jefferson have from time to time refused to spend money appropriated by the Congress for specific purposes. This refusal to spend was referred to as impoundment of funds. Over the years most disagreements over impoundments were settled through negotiations between the executive and legislative branches.

Impoundment of appropriated funds became a major issue in the early 1970's when Richard Nixon actually impounded billions of dollars appropriated for wastewater construction projects and other federal programs that he considered wasteful or outside the proper scope for federal involvement. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1975 decided that Nixon had improperly refused to fund the sewer grants in question (Train v. City of New York). In the meantime, however, the Congress had taken legislative action to assert itself in budgetary matters.

The Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 did several things. It created the House and Senate Budget Committees and a detailed timetable for Congressional action on considering and approving a broad budgetary framework for federal spending each year. The Act also established a formal process for Presidents to propose rescinding (instead of summarily impounding) previously appropriated funds, subject to Congressional approval. When rescissions are proposed, they must be affirmatively approved by both houses of Congress within 45 days. If not approved in that period, the proposed cuts are rejected and the funds must be used as intended.

Since 1974 rescissions have been used sparingly and most often for non-controversial bookkeeping purposes. No major programmatic rescission proposals have been approved by Congress, because presidents have known better than to propose them. Instead, debate in the 1980's and 1990's centered around whether Presidents should have a line item veto authority. With that authority a President could cross out spending items from a major spending bill before signing the bill into law. Such authority was provided by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996. President Bill Clinton actually used the line item veto, sparingly, but only for a brief period, since the Act was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1998.

With that history as backdrop, let us consider the current rescission proposal. When he signed this year's massive $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, President Trump bemoaned all the "excessive spending" in the bill and said he signed it only because of the extra billions of dollars for defense. He also said "never again" would he sign such a bill.

There was immediate negative reaction from conservative commentators-Trump had "sold out to the swamp." Many members of Congress also decried what they considered a lack of fiscal discipline. In fact, the Fiscal Year 2018 bill was the result of a true bipartisan agreement, also agreed to by the Administration, to boost defense and non-defense spending beyond existing budget caps. Responding to the negative chatter from conservative circles, the Administration immediately floated a possible rescission proposal of $60 billion, all in non-defense spending, from the funds in the bill just agreed to and signed by the President.

This first rescission trial balloon went nowhere on Capitol Hill. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said flatly, "A deal is a deal" and that there would be no rescission of 2018 funds. Republican leaders in the House were more muted, but there was little evidence of majority support for cutting funds from the hard fought 2018 package.

Eventually, the Administration backtracked and on May 8 submitted a proposed rescission of some $15.4 billion, with none of the proposed funding cuts to come from the recently passed Omnibus bill. The proposed cuts came from prior year appropriations and, for the most part, represented the kind of routine bookkeeping rescissions that can tidy up the nation's financial ledgers. In fact, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) referred to it as "budgetary spring cleaning."

But, reaction from the Congress, including many Republicans was not sanguine at all. That's where the cries of "a Democratic campaign talking point" and "political poison pill, a self-inflicted wound" come in. The Administration had included nearly $7 billion in cuts for the Children's Health Insurance Fund. Their rationale for the cuts, $5.0 billion was for an authorization that had expired and another $1.8 billion for unused state program back-up funds, made accounting sense, but the appearance, or "optics" in today's parlance, were all wrong and made the proposal controversial from the start.

The Congress has 45 days from May 8 to approve this rescission request or ignore it and let it die. The betting is that the House just might approve the rescission proposal, though many Republican members will be reluctant to cast a vote cutting Children's Health Insurance funding in an election year. The outlook in the Senate is extremely doubtful. Even if the rescission package could be approved with a simple majority (still to be decided), it does not appear there are 51 votes in favor of the proposed cuts.

The Administration has promised its commentators and conservative base that more rescission proposals will be coming in the future. However, the experience with this one, offered almost as an afterthought and in an impolitic manner to "make up for" Trump's signing the $1.3 trillion spending bill for 2018, does not augur well, especially in this election year.

William Gilmartin is leader of the Government Accountability Task Force of Gettysburg Area Democracy for America.