The White House is planning to send a rescission package to Capitol Hill in the coming days, part of an effort to give a figleaf of legitimacy to DOGE’s rampage through the federal government.

The package makes use of a process intended to bring money approved by Congress but not spent by the President into compliance with the post-Richard Nixon Impoundment Control Act. Through the package, President Donald Trump and his administration are aiming to formalize at least some of the administration’s efforts to claw back billions of dollars in federal funding — funding that had already been approved by Congress, but that Trump and Elon Musk have lawlessly slashed as part of Musk’s rampage through the federal government.

The package is, reportedly, expected to include $9.3 billion in cuts to the State Department, National Public Radio (NPR), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and more. The vast majority of the cuts in a rescission bill — roughly $8 billion — will reportedly be on foreign aid.

The Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have, since the first days of his term, been unilaterally making huge cuts to previously appropriated federal funding. The President has already shuttered USAID and folded it into the State Department, slashing hundreds of foreign aid programs. Some of the more disastrous cuts have been blocked by federal judges, but the threat to crucial federal services remains.

For months now, Republican lawmakers, hoping to save face with the public, have been asking the Trump administration to send in a rescission package in order to formalize the cuts he and DOGE have been enacting unilaterally. The soon-expected package is the first stab at that effort. The way that Trump has gone about using rescission is historically unprecedented at best, turning on its head the constitutional process for allocating funds and further undermining Congress’ authority to direct spending, stand up federal agencies and serve as a check on the executive branch.

The Process: How Would This All Work?

Presidents have used the process known as rescission for decades. To formally begin the process, the President has to submit a special message to Congress asking for the rescissions. In the message, the President must detail the amount he would like to rescind and why; the specific accounts it will come from; the projects and functions the potential rescission would impact; as well as the estimated fiscal, economic and budgetary impacts it will have.

Once the President submits the special message, a 45-day countdown begins during which Congress can approve, reject or ignore the President’s request. During those 45 days, the executive branch is also allowed to delay spending the funds in question as it waits for Congress to make a decision on cancelling the previously appropriated spending.

As Congress starts considering the rescission request, it may draft a bill that encapsulates what is outlined in the request. That bill would be referred to the appropriate committee for consideration. The panel will have 25-days to vote it out of committee. If the committee does not act on the bill during that time, it can be brought to the floor for consideration through a discharge petition.

Once either chamber has a rescission bill — either via the committee process or a discharge petition — it can vote on it.

Rescission packages follow a fast track procedure in both chambers, meaning they can be passed with just a simple majority. The 60-vote threshold to circumvent the filibuster does not need to be overcome in the Senate. 

If the same bill passes both chambers, the effort is successful — the President’s budget authority on the funds in question is rescinded. If the bill fails to pass in either chamber or if the 45-day clock runs out, the President’s request is denied and the executive branch must spend the appropriated money and it cannot ask for the same rescission again.

“The Impoundment Control Act is very explicit that he cannot request either a rescission or a deferral of money that has been in a prior special message and been rejected,” David Super, a professor at the Georgetown Law School, told TPM.

The Trump II Difference: ‘We Haven’t Been In This Situation With Prior Presidents’

The Trump administration’s very public government-slashing efforts over the last few months means it is taking a backwards approach to the whole process. It largely ignored Congress’s authority over appropriated federal spending, freezing large chunks of funding for federal programs and crucial services first and asking Congress for permission later. 

The Impoundment Control Act states that the President can hold federal funding for 45 days to see if the rescission he requested is approved by Congress.

But, Super told TPM, in this case, “a lot of the money involved here, the President already started holding well before sending the special message.” 

Super added that this backward approach might trigger some pushback.

“I would expect that there will be people arguing that he only gets a 45-day hold, and if he’s already held it for, say, 30 days, then his ability to hold it will end 15 days from now,” Super told TPM. “We haven’t been in this situation with prior presidents. When they wanted to hold money, they sent up special messages under the act. So, we really just don’t have a precedent for a president ignoring the act and then starting to follow the act.”

Rachel Snyderman, managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, pointed out that the Impoundment Control Act “recognized that there could be a third party enforcer to this procedure and that is a Government Accountability Office.”

They could be the “watchdog” and “the arbiter of the 45-day clock,” she said, adding, “they have the ability to file a suit against the executive branch if they find that the executive branch is impounding or withholding funding illegally.”

But it’s far from a given that the GAO will take on this type of enforcement work.

“Theoretically GAO has the power to litigate against the administration although it’s not at all clear that they’re very inclined to do that,” Super told TPM.

Why This Process Exists In The First Place

In 1972, President Richard Nixon ordered that funding be withheld from many different programs by large amounts, and claimed that he had the right to do so. Many of the intended recipients of the funding, which were often state and local governments, sued him to release the withheld funds, challenging his claims in Courts. The administration released the impounded funds after losing but appealed one case to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled 9-0 against Nixon.

In response to Nixon’s unlawful impoundments, Congress created the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which gave presidents the ability to use the rescission process to request and cancel previously appropriated funds. As detailed, the process also gives the President a limited ability to impound funds temporarily while awaiting congressional action following a formal rescission request.

Between the fiscal years 1974 and 2000, presidents requested rescissions totaling $76 billion, and used the process in every fiscal year except 1988, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Congress accepted $25 billion of those requested cuts.

But the executive branch’s rescission authority has not been utilized successfully since 2000. 

In 2018, during the first Trump administration, the President sent Congress a $15.3 billion rescission request. Trump’s request included cuts from a variety of departments across the federal government. Trump’s largest ask was to rescind $7 billion from the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

Eventually the GOP-controlled Senate rejected that rescission package, and thereby rejected the Trump administration’s request to claw back the previously appropriated government funding.

Though the exact details of the expected request to Congress this time around are still unclear, experts tell TPM that some senators might be uneasy about approving massive cuts to foreign aid or other favorable programs.

“They might receive this package very differently, especially because of sensitivities around foreign assistance, the role of the United States in soft diplomacy and other potential line items that are included in this recissions package,” Snyderman told TPM.

“It is certainly a monumental test of DOGE’s findings and whether or not Congress will ultimately accept those into law,” she added.