LawFare – “Refusals to undertake required spending are already a major theme of Trump’s second term, but the law limits such executive action. During his 2024 campaign, President Trump indicated that he planned to “restore executive branch impoundment authority to cut waste, stop inflation, and crush the Deep State.” Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the agency that oversees spending for the executive branch, repeated this promise at his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 15. But what is “impoundment authority,” and what would restoring it mean? An impoundment is an executive refusal to spend funds appropriated by Congress. Although U.S. presidents historically impounded funds with some regularity, Congress curtailed this practice by statute after President Nixon abused it. As amended over time, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA) now limits the executive branch’s authority to decline to spend or commit to spending funds that Congress has appropriated.At the same time, other statutes do the opposite: While the ICA forbids officials from refusing to use funds in an appropriation, other laws bar them from spending, or even committing to spend, money without one. In particular, the Anti-Deficiency Act, a law enacted in the 19th century and strengthened over time, makes such action unlawful—and sometimes even criminal.  Current law thus often catches the executive branch in a vise: Presidents can neither spend money without an appropriation nor refuse to spend funds once Congress has provided them. From both directions, Congress has reinforced its “power of the purse”—its authority to control the use of federal money. Given this constraint’s potency, it may not be surprising that President Trump would want a way to escape it. To that end, officials floated proposals to narrow the ICA’s interpretation during the first Trump administration, and in the meantime one of the same officials has suggested that the ICA is altogether unconstitutional. Although the statute presents some interpretive puzzles, the constitutional arguments against it are weak and should not gain traction.”