Trump Unveils Plan to ‘Squeeze’ US Spending, Cut Deficit
Trump Unveils Plan to ‘Squeeze’ US Spending, Cut Deficit
According to a news release from his campaign on June 20, former president Donald Trump has presented a plan to “reduce waste, stop inflation, and demolish the “Deep State” of established bureaucrats.
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Trump stated that if he were to be elected to a second term, he would use his executive authority to cancel or delay spending anything he deemed to be wasteful, despite congressional approval.
“I will use the president’s long-recognized impoundment power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings,” Trump stated in the announcement, which also featured a video message from the outgoing leader. “You will receive tax breaks as a result of this. This will hasten the reduction of the deficit and the stopping of inflation.
The most recent declaration is a part of the Trump campaign’s effort to further his policy stances despite the fact that the former president is being indicted on historic state and federal charges for allegedly misusing government records.
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Trump, who is currently running for president of the United States, has produced more than two dozen videos on policy topics under the heading “Agenda 47,” including his stance on impoundment.
The current front-runner for the Republican nomination is Donald Trump. Additionally, he has a tiny advantage over President Joe Biden, the front-runner among Democrats, according to the RealClear Politics average.
Republicans in Congress have been looking into the Biden family’s multimillion dollar international business ventures at the same time that Biden is being investigated for his handling of secret government information. Hunter Biden, the son of Biden, has admitted to federal tax-related offenses.
‘Wasteful’ Spending
Although Trump was blamed for adding to the national deficit during his tenure, he also made cutbacks during his administration. He reduced the number of White House employees and limited how much time public employees could work for unions while drawing government pay.
Since then, the national debt has continued to climb. It recently reached an all-time high of $32 trillion, The Epoch Times previously reported.
Trump blames Biden for wasting “trillions of taxpayer dollars” after his presidency began in 2021, causing “uncontrolled inflation that is crushing working families.”
Biden’s wasteful and useless spending must be curbed, according to Trump, in order to control inflation and save our economy from collapse.
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Following the implementation of the legislative Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (CBA), the president’s ability to limit legislative expenditures was severely limited. The president’s ability to prohibit wasteful spending was “handcuffed” by that act, according to Trump, who added, “This is the only way we will ever return to a balanced budget: Impoundment.”
Trump is praising the impoundment plan despite criticism he received for exercising that authority while serving as the country’s 45th president from 2017 to 21.
Ukraine Finance
Trump’s decision to temporarily halt $250 million in aid that Congress had allocated to help Ukraine defend itself was one of the reasons Congress started the impeachment process against him in 2019. Later, a federal monitoring organization ruled that Trump’s decision to withhold the funds was improper. In the end, Ukraine received the monies.
Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) holds up a copy of the Trump-Ukraine Impeachment inquiry report and a copy of the Constitution of the United States as the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary marks-up House Resolution 755, Articles of Impeachment Against President Donald J. Trump, in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington on Dec. 12, 2019. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump now declares: “When I return to the White House, I will use every legal means at my disposal to fight the Impoundment Control Act and, if necessary, convince Congress to repeal it. We’ll reverse it.
“A crucial tool to obliterate the Deep State, drain the swamp, and starve the warmongers… and the Globalists out of government,” Trump said of impoundment.
Trump described the idea as “anti-inflation, anti-Swamp, anti-globalist—and it’s pro-growth, pro-taxpayer, pro-American, and pro-freedom,” saying that it “can simply choke off the money.”
“I alone can get that done. I will get it done and Make America Great Again,” he said, repeating his well-known campaign slogan.
Impoundment Being a Tool
While the Constitution does provide Congress the power to set a “ceiling” on expenditure, Trump’s statement contends that Congress “should not set the floor,” or minimum level of spending.
Trump said that the CBA “dramatically limited” impoundment. Presidents have thus been compelled “to spend every penny of congressionally appropriated funds,” he claimed.
Trump and his supporters contend that the “checks and balances” built into the American governmental system were intended by the country’s founding fathers to include impoundment.
Impoundment As a Tool
Trump’s release argues that, while the Constitution does grant Congress the authority to set a “ceiling” on spending, Congress “should not set the floor,” or minimum level of spending.
The CBA “dramatically limited” impoundment, Trump said. As a result, presidents have been forced “to spend every penny of congressionally appropriated funds,” he said.
Trump and his team argue that the Founding Fathers of the United States intended impoundment to be part of the “checks and balances” baked into the American government structure.
Under the Constitution, the president is empowered to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” That phrase “has historically been understood to mean that the president can impound funds when doing so allows him to enforce the law more effectively and efficiently,” Trump’s release says.
In contrast, “the CBA placed crippling burdens on the use of impoundment authority and on the president’s negotiating leverage with Congress over how taxpayer dollars are spent, leaving Congress with virtually unchecked budget authority,” the release stated.
In his video, Trump said, “This disaster of a law is clearly unconstitutional—a blatant violation of the separation of powers.”
Trump’s press release claims that as a result, wasteful spending has increased and that “Congress has run deficits in all but four years since 1974.”
The Trump campaign further notes that a GAO report revealed $247 billion in payments made by the federal government in 2022 that were not authorized.
‘Unconstitutional’ law?
The announcement said that only six times since the law’s introduction has Congress produced on-time budget resolutions. “For 50 years, Congress has used the CBA to force the passage of gigantic, wasteful spending packages,” the release stated.
Impoundment authority extends back to President Thomas Jefferson, who served as the country’s third president from 1801-09, “and the earliest days of the American Republic,” according to the press release. The impoundment power has been employed by many presidents throughout the years, including Democrats like James Buchanan and Ulysses S. Grant; according to the release, 43 governors around the country “regularly use” it.
“Very simply, this meant that if Congress provided more funding than was needed to run the government, the president could refuse to waste the extra funds and instead return the money to the general treasury and maybe even lower your taxes,” Trump said in his video.
Trump pledged: “On Day One, I will order every federal agency to begin identifying large chunks of their budgets that can be saved through efficiencies and waste reduction using impoundment.”
National defense, Medicare, and Social Security would be exempt from the impoundment cutbacks, Trump said, adding: “Some of the funds we save through impoundment from other parts of the government can be used to strengthen Medicare and Social Security for years to come.”