Trump's Quiet Coup Over the Budget

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.

Half a century later, as partisan gridlock stiffens and executive action becomes the default mode of governance, it is no surprise the issue has resurfaced.

That guardrail is in danger of being dismantled. Getting rid of the ICA would let presidents delay, redirect, or cancel spending however they see fit, effectively handing Congress’s constitutional power of the purse over to the president. For a Congress already paralyzed by partisanship and dysfunction, this is not just another budget fight—it is a pivot point in the balance of power.

If the continuing resolutions described in “The Real Shutdown” blurred the line between congressional intent and executive execution, this bill would erase it entirely. What began as a tactic to avoid shutdowns has evolved into a structural surrender—a quiet coup over the nation’s budget process.

What Repealing the ICA Would Actually Do

The Act has long served as a brake on presidential overreach, ensuring that once Congress appropriates funds, presidents cannot withhold or redirect them for political gain. Without it, presidents could govern by impoundment—deciding which programs live and which die, regardless of congressional intent.

First, presidents would gain sweeping control over spending. Agencies could be directed to withhold funds from disfavored programs—such as environmental enforcement or public broadcasting—while fast-tracking money toward politically favored initiatives like border security or defense contracts. Appropriations would become instruments of presidential preference rather than expressions of legislative will.

Second, it would cripple congressional oversight. Once the executive controls both the timing and flow of funds, oversight loses its teeth. Committees could demand accountability but lack the leverage to enforce it. Congress would be left performing oversight rather than exercising it.

Third, future presidents would inherit this unchecked authority. What today’s majority grants to Trump, tomorrow’s president—of either party—will inherit. Once Congress relinquishes a power, it rarely gets it back.

The above consequences amount to a fundamental imbalance in the separation of powers. Together, these shifts would leave Congress with little real leverage over how its own appropriations are used, completing the transfer of fiscal control to the executive.

The upshot? The presidency would become even more dominant. Modern presidents already use executive orders and emergency declarations to shape policy. Repealing the ICA would add budget control to that arsenal—combining the power to command with the power to fund—the very outcome the Framers feared most.

The Bigger Picture: Project 2025

Building on this erosion of legislative power, the push to repeal the ICA is not an isolated maneuver. It fits squarely within Project 2025's playbook, the Heritage Foundation’s sweeping blueprint to “dismantle the administrative state” and concentrate authority in the executive branch. The project’s architects argue that federal agencies have become unaccountable bureaucracies obstructing conservative governance. Their solution is not reform but control—installing political loyalists, curbing agency independence, and removing statutory barriers to presidential discretion.

Repealing the ICA would give the president the financial tools to make that vision real. It would allow funding decisions to be driven by ideology—rewarding allies, punishing opponents, and bypassing Congress entirely. Trump’s allies have already signaled this intent through efforts to reclassify federal workers, defund diversity programs, and sideline environmental initiatives. Without the ICA, such actions could occur by executive order rather than legislation.

For decades, both parties have denounced “runaway spending” while relying on temporary fixes that mask deeper institutional weakness. Now the cumulative effect of those decisions has come due. A Congress that once jealously guarded its prerogatives has grown accustomed to ceding them, one continuing resolution at a time. Repealing the ICA merely formalizes this drift—transforming what began as budgetary neglect into deliberate centralization.

Conclusion: The Real Cost of Convenience

The battle over H.R. 1180 is about far more than fiscal management. It is a test of whether Congress still possesses the will to act as a coequal branch of government. The Founders designed separation of powers to slow rash decisions and force negotiation. Today, that friction is treated as dysfunction—and executive overreach as efficiency.

If the ICA is repealed, future presidents will inherit not just broader spending discretion but a Congress too weakened to reclaim it. The power of the purse—the very lever that defines legislative sovereignty—will have been traded for short-term political convenience. It is a quiet coup precisely because it arrives without fanfare, cloaked in the language of reform. Yet its consequences would echo for generations: a presidency cut loose from appropriation limits, an enfeebled legislature, and a democracy in which policy is dictated, not debated.

The danger lies not only in what this president might do with such authority but in what every president after him will be able to do because of it. To resist that future, Congress must reclaim its budgetary authority—by restoring regular order, enforcing oversight, and refusing to govern by continuing resolution. Citizens, too, can play a role by demanding accountability and recognizing that democracy’s strength depends on the vitality of its institutions.

Robert Cropf is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University.