ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. Lawmakers are supposed to decide how the government collects and spends money. But President Trump has spent the last six months pushing the boundaries of that power, as some of his top officials look to exert more control over federal spending.
NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith and congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh are following the push and pull between the two branches, and they are here in the studio. Good to have you both here. Happy Friday.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good to be here.
SHAPIRO: Tam, are we at the point now where we can say there is a Trump doctrine for government spending now?
KEITH: Well, we can say that Trump's approach to government spending is much like his broader approach to governing in the second term. He is testing the limits of executive power. He is seeking wins for himself. That involves blowing past norms and what was thought to be established law - doing everything he can through executive orders, Elon Musk's DOGE project, brute political force. The head of President Trump's budget office, Russell Vought, has a maximalist view about executive power, and he has a very clear agenda. He spoke last week at a breakfast I attended that was put on by The Christian Science Monitor.
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RUSSELL VOUGHT: We are not saying that the power of the purse does not belong with Congress. It absolutely does. It is one of the most constitutional, foundational principles. But it's a ceiling. It is not a floor. It is not the notion that you have to spend every last dollar of that.
KEITH: So programs that don't fit with Trump's ideology - whole government agencies - have seen their funding and operations put on hold by the Trump administration. And Trump and Vought are really just trying out a lot of ideas that fiscal hard-liners previously only theorized might be possible.
SHAPIRO: Vought is such an interesting figure here because he's not a household name, but he's hugely influential. Deirdre, tell us more about him.
DEIRDRE WALSH, BYLINE: He is. And he's had a long career in Washington, both on Capitol Hill and in Trump's first term in office. He's most recently better known for Project 2025 - he was the co-author of that - which ended up essentially becoming a roadmap for Trump's term in office. And that document really argues for consolidation of power within the executive branch.
SHAPIRO: And so how is that mapping onto what we've seen so far?
KEITH: Well, at that breakfast, Vought said something that is really quite stunning given the dynamics in Congress, where annual appropriations bills have long required bipartisan support to pass.
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VOUGHT: The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan.
KEITH: Less bipartisan - which is a heck of a thing to say with government funding running out at the end of September.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
WALSH: Right. And you need 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything, which means you need Democrats.
SHAPIRO: Well, setting aside Democrats for a moment, are Republicans even on board with this not-bipartisan strategy?
WALSH: Right. Not all agree with Vought. I talked to several Senate Republicans, and there's definitely a split. Some say the Republicans in Congress were elected to slash spending. So they're all-in. They want more rescissions bills, like this one that was just approved by Congress last week that clawed back $9 billion for foreign aid and public media. Others are more uneasy about ceding some of that power away to the executive. They didn't like the lack of detail that was in that rescissions package. Even some who voted for it said it was sort of like a trust exercise. They would do it because it was essentially a small amount of money - $9 billion, they said.
SHAPIRO: Only $9 billion, yeah.
WALSH: Right (laughter). One of them was Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker. He voted for it, but he worried about giving away Congress' power of the purse.
ROGER WICKER: I decided, on balance, to give the benefit of the doubt to my teammates. But I do think there's going to be an insistence on more detail.
KEITH: So the rescission process that Deirdre mentioned is something that Congress actually created back in the 1970s for this very scenario. This was the first time in a generation that such a package has actually gone through. And the Budget Director, Vought, saw it as a test case and one that was successful.
WALSH: I do think, as we're talking about how Congress spends money and Republicans talking about cutting spending, they did just pass a big tax and spending bill that's going to add trillions of dollars to the deficit.
SHAPIRO: Do you expect the White House will try more rescissions to roll back more spending, perhaps even on a bigger scale?
KEITH: Yes. Russell Vought promised more rescission packages would be coming now that this one went through. He wouldn't preview what would be cut or when it might be sent over.
SHAPIRO: You know, some Democrats warned that the rescission package spelled the end of federal spending as we know it. Sounds like Russell Vought is arguing for the end of federal spending as we know it. Deirdre, what's the future hold?
WALSH: I think it's unclear. There are signs that Senate Republicans are trying to work with Democrats going forward on spending bills. This week, Democrats did help advance debate on the first package of spending bills, and they said it was because they were bipartisan, that some of it was to undo some of the DOGE cuts that happened earlier. But Democrats are also split on this whole issue going forward. Some say that recent rescissions package means they can't trust Republicans. I talked to Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, who's on the Appropriations Committee, and I asked him whether Democrats are going to cooperate.
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: We'd like to cooperate with the Constitution and Article I, which means that Republicans can't keep playing switcheroo.
WALSH: You know, Van Hollen says Republicans backtracking on deals that they made in March with Democrats means there's just a lack of trust.
KEITH: And trust is a real issue. I spoke with Andrew Rudalevige about this. He's a professor of government at Bowdoin College. He says this particular rescission package was specifically designed to be hyperpalatable for Republicans in Congress, but it risks poisoning the budget process because why would anyone agree to provide the votes to pass a budget on a bipartisan basis if that money can just be clawed back on a partisan basis?
ANDREW RUDALEVIGE: I think the damage is really on the side of believing congressional leadership when they cut a deal, if the ultimate result will be this series of accepting the administration's post hoc cuts.
SHAPIRO: It seems like every year, we talk about Congress failing to fund the federal government, facing the threat of a shutdown. Is Congress even using the power it has?
WALSH: Not effectively. As you say, it's really become the norm to just pass these stopgap bills or throw a bunch of bills into one massive spending package that people don't read. It's been decades since Congress has actually passed all 12 bills that spell out how the government should be funded. But when they punt and just pass these stopgap bills, Congress does end up giving the executive branch much more latitude on how to spend all of this federal money.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Deirdre Walsh and Tamara Keith. Thank you both.
KEITH: You're welcome.
WALSH: Thanks, Ari. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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