President Donald Trump effectively canceled almost $3 billion in foreign aid, science programs, and economic development money from the recently enacted government-funding law, another unilateral action to block enacted spending.
Russell Vought, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director, detailed the legal justification to block the funds in a memo obtained by Bloomberg Government, dated March 24. The document blocks $2.9 billion out of $12.4 billion that was exempted from legal spending limits through an emergency declaration.
Trump and Vought’s decision drew criticism from key congressional Democrats, who said it was illegal — a possible sign of more lawsuits over Trump’s unilateral acts to slash spending.
“What President Trump has just done is wrongheaded, counterproductive, and unlawful, and I hope my colleagues in Congress join me in working to protect these investments and ensure the law is followed,” Senate Appropriations Vice Chair
Trump’s selective decision to cut some of the spending may conflict with a statutory requirement under the funding law enacted on March 15. That measure extended previous language that allowed the $12.4 billion to be spent if Trump “designates all such amounts” as emergency spending. Vought’s memo, approved by Trump, calls for 16 accounts to be designated as emergency money and 11 accounts to be rejected.
The dispute stems from the 2023 debt limit deal, in which negotiators set statutory spending limits and agreed — in a hotly debated “side deal” — to use emergency designations to exempt extra money from those caps.
“My designation does not include the remaining 11 appropriations — totaling nearly $3 billion — that were improperly designated by the Congress as emergency in the Act that stem from the June 2023 side deal with the Democrats to evade the spending caps signed into law, and I do not concur that the added spending is truly for emergency needs,” Trump wrote in his approval of the document.
Congressional Republicans — including those who supported the 2023 debt limit deal — have stood by Trump. The “side deal” negotiated by then-President Joe Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was a relic of a different Congress.
“I wasn’t the chairman when that happened, the speaker wasn’t the speaker when that happened, and the president wasn’t the president when that happened,” Cole said. He said he doesn’t “have any concerns about” Trump’s cancellation of funds.
Murray’s office published a summary of funds that are blocked under Trump’s decision. That includes:
- $1.5 billion in humanitarian assistance
- $310 million in US aid to Europe and Eurasia
- $300 million in economic growth programs, including for secure supply chains
- $275 million in foreign military financing
- $234 million in National Science Foundation funds
- $115 million for State Department projects focused on international fentanyl and narcotics trade, human trafficking, and other international crime
- $100 million in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funds
Democrats were further riled by an OMB decision to take down a website that published apportionment documents, which detail part of the process to spend money appropriated by Congress. Lawmakers required those documents to be published online in 2022, after Trump used the apportionment process to temporarily withhold aid to Ukraine in 2019.
“Federal law is unequivocal: OMB must publish the agency’s legally-binding budget decisions,” Murray and House Appropriations ranking member
A senior administration official said OMB took the website down because publication of the documents hampered officials’ ability to work through the apportionment process and that some of the documents contained information that could harm national security.
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