Podcast: Is the Supreme Court's legitimacy at risk?

In “The Real Shutdown,” I argued that Congress’s reliance on stopgap spending bills has weakened its power of the purse, giving Trump greater say over how federal funds are used. The latest move in that long retreat is H.R. 1180, a bill introduced in February 2025 by Representative Andrew Clyde (R-GA). The one-sentence bill would repeal the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 in its entirety—no amendments, no replacement, no oversight mechanism. If continuing resolutions handed the White House a blank check, repealing the ICA would make it permanent, stripping Congress of its last protection against executive overreach in federal spending and accelerating the quiet transfer of budgetary power to the presidency.

The Impoundment Control Act (ICA) was a congressional response to an earlier constitutional crisis. After Richard Nixon refused to spend funds Congress had appropriated, lawmakers across party lines reasserted their authority. The ICA required the president to notify Congress of any intent to withhold or cancel funds and barred them from doing so without legislative approval. It was designed to prevent precisely the kind of unilateral power that Nixon had claimed and that Trump now seeks to reclaim.