Why Trump Keeps Clawing Back Spending

A lot of observers, including many congressional Republicans, likely thought of this week’s successful drive to claw back previously appropriated funds via the arcane process known as rescissions would be a one-off proposition. After all, President Trump got the bulk of his entire legislative agenda enacted in the One Big Beautiful Act. Wasn’t it time to call it a year and let Republicans hunker down and get ready to fight for reelection in 2026? Yes, the White House insisted on the $9 billion rescission package (after taking out a politically dangerous cut in global AIDS funding) that the House cleared in the wee hours on Friday. But that was in motion before Trump’s megabill passed, and junking it would have been a sign of weakness, which this White House considers intolerable.

So it may have come as a nasty surprise to many on both sides of the aisle in Congress that even before the first rescissions were formally approved, their author, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, was already discussing a second package, with maybe more on the way, as the Christian Science Monitor told us after Vought met with reporters:

As congressional Republicans near their goal of authorizing $9 billion in federal cuts made by the Trump administration, the man who helped those cuts reach the finish line hinted that it was just the beginning.

Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor Breakfast that the administration will likely push for legislation clawing back spending that Congress previously authorized …

“This is the kind of thing that’s necessary for us to change the paradigm of the way the town has worked,” Mr. Vought said.

“The notion that we have now dusted off a process that allows on a majority basis to come along after and cut funding is very, very substantial,” he continued.

Nobody would doubt that. Since time immemorial, spending bills (known formally as appropriations) have been regular old legislation vulnerable to the Senate filibuster, meaning that it took 60 Senate votes to pass them, and barring a supermajority, bipartisan negotiations to craft them. Rescissions short-circuit that process, canceling appropriations by a simple majority vote (which must take place 45 days after the president proposes them). So it’s a roundabout way to impose absolute majority rule over all spending decisions and cut out the minority party, which is precisely why Vought loves it so, as he explained to reporters:

“Who ran and won on an agenda of a bipartisan appropriations process? Literally no one. No Democrat, no Republican. There is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said, ‘I’m voting for a bipartisan appropriations process,’” he said.

“The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan. We’re $37 trillion in debt.”

This isn’t what a lot of Republicans want to hear, Politico reports:

Congressional Republicans have passed Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package, capping a painful ordeal that put even members who supported it in a tough spot.

Now, many Republicans are wincing at the prospect of having to do it all over again.

So why is Trump putting them in this position? There are several possible explanations.

The first is that like Vought, Trump is ideologically committed to reducing the kinds of government spending he doesn’t like by any means necessary. This seems unlikely. No, the president doesn’t mind crushing Democrats and ordering Republicans around. But nor has he shown many signs of being a serious fiscal hawk like Vought, the Project 2025 co-author who seems authentically to hate federal employees (whom he has said he wants to “traumatize”) and much of what they do every day.

The second possibility is that in order to get his megabill through Congress, Trump and his agents quietly promised balky fiscal hawks (and there were quite a few of them in both chambers) clawbacks of spending as a blood offering for their votes, as was rumored at the time. It would be helpful to know how much blood they were promised and how many installments were deemed necessary, but Vought and other White House officials are being very unforthcoming about their exact plans.

The third possibility is that Team Trump savors the memory of Democrats snarling and biting each other back in March when they had to decide whether to approve a Republican-designed stopgap spending bill or trigger a government shutdown. It was a carefully prepared trap that ensnared Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and nearly cost him his leadership position. I’m sure many Republicans would be happy to see it all happen again, and the best way to ensure that it does is to blow up bipartisan negotiations over appropriations that will replace the stopgap bill on October 1. The first rescission package that Congress just passed pushed congressional Democrats to the brink of breaking off appropriations talks. More rescissions will likely doom negotiations for good, which means another government shutdown “cliff” in about ten weeks.

Right now, Senate Republicans who have been negotiating with Democrats over spending bills appear to be dismayed over Vought trying to blow it all up, but they’ll shut up if the boss tells them to. So will Vought if Trump decides not to go down this destructive path. But at the moment, the 47th president has other fish to fry.