Democrats confront appropriations trust deficit with White House

WASHINGTON — With fewer than two dozen legislative days left before annual appropriations run out for the year, Democrats say they face a test of faith on whether to trust a bipartisan appropriations process for the next fiscal year.

The ticking clock to Sept. 30, when current appropriations lapse, coincides with Trump administration moves to remake the executive branch and rescind previously approved spending that have shaped federal policy in the last few months.

That’s left Democrats feeling burned.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., a senior appropriator and minority whip, said the moves by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are troubling.

“We’re afraid it’s a pattern that’s going to eliminate the appropriations process,” Durbin said. “The administration believes, with reconciliation, with rescissions, they can manage their budget. There will be very little bipartisanship.”

The White House’s own budget guru, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, forecast a more partisan appropriations process in the future, and more majoritarian rescissions packages.

“The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan,” Vought told reporters Thursday.

During the event, held by the Christian Science Monitor, Vought argued the electorate did not cast their ballots for bipartisan spending bills, and that a bipartisan process has not produced results — the country is $37 trillion in debt and the government is frequently funded through continuing resolutions.

“Who ran and won on an agenda of a bipartisan appropriations process? Literally no one. No Democrat, no Republican. There is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said, ‘I’m voting for a bipartisan appropriations process,’” he said.

Vought also argued that executive impoundments of congressional appropriations, as well as a more partisan appropriations process in general, could force more bipartisan negotiations.

“We are not saying that the power of the purse does not belong with Congress. It absolutely does. It is one of the most constitutional foundational principles,” Vought said. “But … it’s a ceiling. It is not a floor. It is not the notion that you have to spend every last dollar of that.”

Decades in the making

Senate leaders have said they intend to start appropriations floor votes this week before the chamber leaves town for the August recess.

However there is little time for both chambers to get through all appropriations bills before the Sept. 30 deadline. The Senate has fewer than 24 voting days scheduled between now and then, and the House just 16.

Matt Glassman, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, said there’s been a breakdown in the appropriations process decades in the making that has come to a head.

“I don’t blame (Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.)or (Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine) or anyone else to say ‘How can we cut a deal when there is no way to ensure the other side commits to the deal?’” Glassman said.

Presidents of both parties have made decisions — such as former President Joe Biden’s effort to forgive student loans without Congress — that have undermined the legislative branch’s power of the purse, he said.

Now Trump has put that dynamic into overdrive.

The Trump administration’s moves to shut down agencies, withhold funding and rescind grants — along with the narrow passage of the $9 billion rescission package — undermine the incentive for Democrats to cooperate with Republicans on an appropriations process that normally requires 60 votes.

“All of those things sort of throw into question whether there will be any kind of bipartisan compromise going forward,” Glassman said.

Glassman said that the passage of the rescissions package using a rarely invoked provision of budgetary law is itself a sign of the times. Rescissions have rarely been used and were last successfully enacted in fiscal 2000, during the Clinton administration.

The appropriations problem is an acute sign of broader issues around the agreements to pass legislation, Glassman said.

“Any sort of rule-bound institution like Congress, or anything really, relies on a number of norms of behavior to supplement the rules, and I think we are seeing more of the norms fall away,” he said.

‘A trust deficit’

Some Democrats said they feel as though the Trump administration has changed the terms of bipartisan funding deals.

Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., the ranking member on the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee, pointed to Trump administration moves to rescind grant opportunities and other funds.

“There’s already a trust deficit, because even with the approps laws and budgets that have been passed in recent years, they haven’t been adhering to it,” Meng said.

In addition, the Supreme Court has granted the Trump administration numerous, if temporary, victories in his efforts to reshape the executive branch without the consent of Congress. That ranges from rulings allowing changes to foreign aid to firing Senate-confirmed board members to allowing the administration to start winding down the Education Department.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee and a former Budget Committee chairman, said the legislative process requires trust that the other side will follow through on that deal.

“The violence that the Supreme Court has allowed the administration to do to Congress’s Article 1 powers, combined with the violence to the appropriations process that is being done through this and presumably subsequent rescissions efforts is really, deeply, damaging to that core Article 1 spending power of Congress,” Whitehouse said.

There’s not much time to address those issues, Meng said, but there is still a desire among Democrats for a full appropriations process rather than a mostly status quo CR such as the one that is currently funding the government.

“Sept. 30 sounds far away, but in terms of session, actual session voting days, it’s coming up really soon,” Meng said. “And it doesn’t benefit anyone to just pass a short-term continuing resolution. People, groups, constituents at home are depending on these appropriations.”

‘Take it or leave it’

Republicans have largely backed Trump’s approach in his second term — including by sending the $9 billion rescissions package, which a number initially had qualms about.

Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., an Appropriations Committee member, said Democrats’ concerns are more a symptom of their dislike of Trump than a breakdown in the process.

“Let’s all be honest with each other: If Trump found a cure for cancer, they would vote against it. That’s the approach they’ve taken since he entered the political sphere in 2015; it was their approach to impeachments and other accusations,” LaLota said.

There are some Republicans who have their own issues with how the Trump administration has handled the last few months.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., acknowledged the trust issues Democrats have. He said there may be problems the administration can address in how it approaches Congress in the next few months.

“I have concerns, and I think, but it’s going to take, it’s going to take a recognition on the part of the executive branch that if they do want an appropriations process to move forward, it does take a bipartisan agreement,” Rounds said.

Rounds said that Congress as a whole can address the issue by doing the grunt work of passing authorization bills with specifics that give the executive branch less flexibility — something Congress has been reluctant to do.

“If you are very broad in your appropriation because you don’t want to do the hard work of specifying it, then you leave the executive branch with a huge amount of power, and that’s something that I think Congress has got to review,” Rounds said.

The loudest GOP critics of the administration’s approach may be Collins, who said she disagreed with Vought’s view of bipartisanship on appropriations, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who said Vought seems to view appropriators as “irrelevant.”

Both Collins and Murkowski voted against the rescissions package in the Senate.

“It is pretty dismissive of the appropriations process, pretty dismissive of our role,” Murkowski said.

Murkowski also said the White House should not proceed with another rescissions package.

“I do not think that should be our path, that is not legislating, that is basically the White House saying this is what we want you to do, take it or leave it, trust us,” Murkowski said.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who ultimately backed the rescissions bill, said the Trump administration could get itself in trouble with its own party depending on how it is implemented.

“If they implement this and after all their assurances, if they cut programs that four or five of our members get angry over after a sort of general assurance that we’re just doing waste and fraud, then how on Earth do you think we can bridge a gap with Democrats?” Tillis said. “We’ll be working on bridging a gap with Republicans.”

Whether transparency and sticking to what the administration has promised will be enough to build the trust needed for a bipartisan process ahead of Sept. 30 is still an open question, he said.

“It’s hard to predict the future around this place, but we’re going to know around Sept. 30,” Tillis said.

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