Congress Needs Language in Funding Bills to Protect Government Funding from Unlawful Overreach

IFPTE is requesting Congress negotiate and pass government funding that includes legislative language protecting congressionally approved funding levels from being withheld by the Administration and preventing a unilateral implementation of the President’s budget contrary to Congressional intent.  

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) have introduced a Democratic continuing resolution (CR), H.R. 5450 and S. 2882, that includes provisions to make clear that the President cannot lawfully implement his budget and ignore Congress, as well as provisions to block any mass terminations or furloughs during the term of the CR. The CR also protects federal science research efforts from unilateral cancellations during the CR, including protections for NASA Science missions, NOAA activities, National Science Foundation work and grants, and medical research. A fact sheet on the Democratic funding bill is available here, and a section-by-section summary of the bill is available here.. 

For more information and analysis on why Congressional short-term and full-year funding needs these provisions to block unlawful Executive Branch overreach, read the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, New Proposal Shows Congress Can Enact Guardrails to Ensure a Deal Is a Deal for 2026 Funding.   

From the very first days of the second Trump Administration to the present day, the Administration has repeatedly overstepped Congress’s authority and role by illegally withholding federal funds for specific agency operations and missions, delaying and in some instances canceling federal grants that have already been committed, and claiming to exploit loopholes in the law that do not exist to deny allocating federal dollars.  

These actions not only violate Congress’s constitutional power to appropriate or direct funds from the Treasury to the federal government (under Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, the Appropriations Clause) and the power to raise and direct federal funds to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” (under Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution, the Spending Clause), they also undermine the whole purpose of Congressional appropriations. If the President has invented for himself the powers to unilaterally veto any part of federal spending that Congress has authorized under Congress’s Constitutionally defined role, what is the point of Congress appropriating funding that can simply be rejected at the whim of the President? 

The Administration has already used unprecedented tactics such as "pocket rescissions" to withhold funds until they expire, effectively nullifying bipartisan funding agreements. Elsewhere, the Administration is directing agencies to plan to implement funding cuts in the President’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2026, not what Congress has appropriated or will appropriate for FY26. The threat of unlawfully imposing budget cuts that Congress has not yet approved has also been part of the effort to bully federal workers to leave the civil service through the deferred resignation program and voluntary early separation and retirement incentives. These unlawful decisions by the Administration have not only caused chaos at agencies and the abrupt loss of expertise across the federal workforce, but have also wasted enormous federal resources and strained the federal services and functions that Americans, businesses, and our economy rely on.