What's a pocket rescission and can Trump use one?

The Constitution unambiguously grants Congress the power to determine how tax dollars are spent, an uncomfortable reality for the Trump administration's efforts to unilaterally slash spending. Many of the cuts recommended by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency in the spring therefore needed the retroactive blessing of Congress, a process known as "rescission." And media reports suggest that the Trump administration is soon set to escalate its war on Congress' spending power by using something dubbed a "pocket rescission" to block funding without giving Congress enough time to consider the request.

What is the Trump administration trying to do?

Congress frequently rescinds money it has previously allocated for all kinds of reasons. But the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Director Russell Vought might "employ a pocket rescission sometime before the Sept. 30 government funding deadline," said The Hill. Vought's plan involves using not the ordinary rescission process driven by Congress but rather section 1012 of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. This allows the president to pause, or impound, allocated funding for 45 days. If Congress doesn't act to officially rescind the funds, the executive branch is obligated to resume the spending.

This actually happened quite recently. In July, the Republican-controlled Congress complied with the Trump administration's request to rescind $9 billion in spending, including funding for public broadcasting. While critics lambasted Congress for capitulating to the White House, the maneuver was legal. The Trump administration, however, is reportedly planning to use this provision in a way that the U.S. government has recently deemed unlawful. This so-called "pocket rescission" is "when a president asks Congress to rescind (or cancel) funds very close to the end of the fiscal year," said the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Because "not enough time is given to consider this request," the president is "bypassing congressional authority over government funding" and taking a knee to let the clock run down on spending he dislikes.

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The current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, and therefore any rescission request that pauses funding after August 16 (45 days before the end of the fiscal year) would qualify as a "pocket rescission." The GAO is an independent, non-partisan agency located in the legislative branch that was created to "make sure that the appropriation laws enacted by the Congress are properly implemented," said the American Enterprise Institute.

A pocket rescission is "neither a rescission nor is it legal," said the Center for American Progress. After all, a "loophole that allowed the president to impound funds over the will of Congress," would ultimately "undermine the entire intent of the law." But the "OMB asserts that there is nothing controversial about pocket rescissions," said Lawfare. The record shows "they have been used this way before," and past presidents, including Jimmy Carter, employed them without being accused of precipitating constitutional crises.

Can anyone stop a pocket rescission?

During the second Trump administration, the boundaries of legality are being redrawn by the president in conjunction with a Supreme Court determined to legitimize virtually every action by the White House. This dynamic was perhaps clearest when the Supreme Court blessed the Trump administration's decision to fire Democratic members of the bipartisan National Labor Relations Board, in clear violation of congressional statute and existing Supreme Court precedent on the matter. While the Supreme Court's May decision in that case was "technically a temporary one," it nevertheless "clearly forecasts the eventual outcome of the case when it is argued before the court," likely sometime in 2026, said NPR.

So while pocket rescissions are of dubious legality according to widespread understandings of the U.S. Constitution as it existed prior to Trump's second inauguration, the Supreme Court seems quite unlikely to halt them. Instead, in keeping with the doctrine of the "unitary executive theory," the court will almost certainly grant the Trump administration wide latitude to interpret existing law as it sees fit.