Trump administration officials are weighing a controversial maneuver aimed at allowing them to block federal funding previously authorized by Congress without lawmakers’ approval. 

White House budget chief Russell Vought said earlier this month that the gambit, known as “pocket rescissions,” is one of the options on the table for the administration as it continues its quest to reduce federal spending. 

But even some Republicans are uneasy about the idea and uncertain about its legality.

Here are a few things to know about the idea. 

What are pocket rescissions?

While Congress has rescinded some federal funding over the years using legislative vehicles such as the annual government spending bills, the president also has the powers to initiate a special process to yank back previously allocated funds but lawmakers’ approval is still required to approve the rescission.

Earlier this month, Trump became the first president in decades to successfully claw back funds via the process, with Republicans in Congress rescinding about $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting.

The Impoundment Control Act (ICA) lays out rules governing that process and allows the administration to temporarily withhold funding for 45 days while Congress considers the request. If Congress opts not to approve the request, the funds must be released. 

A pocket rescission would see the president send the same type of request to Congress, but do so within 45 days of the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The targeted funds could then essentially be held until the clock runs out and they expire.

“And then the money evaporates at the end of the fiscal year,” said Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The OMB director also argued at a recent event that a “pocket rescission is no different than a normal rescission, except for the timing of when it occurs.” 

How do they work?

Experts say the plan could allow the administration to reduce funding available to agencies without Congress’ approval.

“The budget authority has lapsed, and you can never obligate it,” Bobby Kogan, a former Senate budget aide and senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said in an interview.

Kogan offered an example of a program that was given until the end of fiscal 2025 to spend $10 billion, but the administration was able to withhold some of the funding later in the year under the special process. 

“It is, of course, illegal to let a whole bunch of it lapse on purpose,” he argued. “It’s an illegal impoundment, but even if you did that, too late, you’re out of luck, right? If you go past Sept. 30, then that money just lapses.”

At the same time, in such a scenario, Kogan noted the program could see new funding allocated as part of a stopgap passed by the end of Congress to keep the government open. In such cases, Congress usually decides to keep funding at the same levels to buy time for a larger deal to hash out and approve new government funding plans. 

But Kogan added that while a stopgap could give the program “another $10 billion to play with,” it still “lost the money in 2025 that [it was] supposed to get.”

Is it legal?

Some experts have described the move as “an illegal impoundment,” while others have referred to it as a “loophole” in current budget law.

In an interview, Richard Stern, a former congressional staffer and director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, pushed back on arguments that pocket rescissions are illegal, while noting a lack of cases adjudicating the matter.

“The entire process is only a half century old,” he said.

“I think what the left is looking at, and other people are looking at, is that they think that, you know, there’s open ground to fight to contest in the courts,” he added. But he also argued, “If you’re administering a program and you think there’s fraud, the administration has the right to track that down and prevent fraud, which can involve holding the money for a minute while you’re doing that.”

Vought has viewed pocket rescissions as “one of the executive tools” that are “on the table” as it looks to cut some federal spending. But he added last week that the administration hasn’t yet “made a determination to use it in part, because we’re making progress during the normal course of business with Congress.”

Democrats and other critics have described the maneuver as illegal and argue the intent of the ICA is clear. The Government Accountability Office also said in 2018 that the ICA “does not permit the withholding of funds through their date of expiration.”

“The law doesn’t say, ‘Oh, you can only send up a special message in the first nine months of the year,’” Kogan said, adding, “It doesn’t say that, because they were imagining that a president would send stuff up early in the year.”

But he said the administration’s interpretation of the law “undermines the entire intent of the law.”

“It is a method through which [the administration] would get to impound funds against congressional intent,” Kogan said, arguing the proposed pocket rescissions strategy could be used to block funds even if Congress objects at the end of the fiscal year. 

“The answer period, full stop is that pocket rescissions are illegal impoundments,” he said. 

What can Congress do?

In the event the administration does move to withhold funds through pocket rescissions in the weeks ahead, experts have noted Congress can decide to provide new funding to targeted programs as part of a government funding bill or a continuing resolution, also known as a stopgap, to keep the government open past September. 

But experts say further action would likely be needed to restore funding to programs lost by way of pocket rescissions. 

At the same time, lawmakers on both sides have raised questions about the legality of the maneuver, which even one House GOP spending cardinal went as far as to argue was “unconstitutional.” Other experts have also argued the tactic would threaten Congress’s “power of the purse.” 

“If Congress cares about its power of the purse, it needs to find ways to actually assert itself and control the flow of spending, and not just let the Office of Management and Budget decide what’s actually going to get spent, and it seems like that might require joining this fight in a fairly open confrontation,” said Philip Wallach, a senior fellow focused on the “separation of powers” at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

“I’m sure a lot of them are trying to de-escalate this and work things out behind the scenes before it kind of comes to that,” he said. “But I think if we see many tens of billions of dollars worth of pocket rescissions, that would be hard to avoid an open conflict, if appropriators want to retain any relevance at all.”