WASHINGTON — Less than 12 hours after the White House budget office paused all federal grants and loans, Democratic Senators called the move the most direct attack on the authority of Congress in the country’s history.
The memo sent to various government agencies effectively sought to halt funding for disaster relief, education, child care, transportation, cancer research, law enforcement and other programs, effective at 5 p.m. EST Tuesday.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze through Monday, ruling just minutes before the freeze was intended to go into effect.
“This is funding that communities are expecting, and this memo is creating chaos and confusion about whether these resources will be available to them,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said during a news conference Tuesday morning. “Entire budgets and payrolls across the country are carefully hinging on these resources.”
The memo Office of Management and Budget acting Director Matthew J. Vaeth issued Monday has broad implications for everything from homeless veterans and preschool education to individuals participating in federally funded cancer trials and bridges and roads currently under construction.
“As much as Trump desires it, the president is not a king,” Merkley said. “As much as Trump desires it, a law is not a suggestion. These are not questions of opinion. These are principles at the heart of our constitutional system. It’s at the heart of our checks and balances, and thus we have a constitutional crisis.”
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said her office has been flooded with phone calls and emails since the memo was released, directing federal agencies to review their grants, loans and other programs to ensure they comply with the president’s flurry of recent executive orders.
“It’s just sheer panic that at 5 o’clock tonight — the funds that they count on, whether it’s for our Title 1 schools, whether it’s our hospitals who are doing research, whether it is our community health centers who are providing care for people in line right now — whether they will be able to provide those services tomorrow,” she said.
Murray said her Appropriations Committee has been working all night to get in touch with affected agencies to understand the full impacts of a federal funding memo she said was “very poorly written.”
“No one voted to wake up this morning and wonder whether their child would get the care they need, wonder whether or not their parents would get kicked out of a nursing home, wonder whether or not the research that is so critical to keeping their child alive would continue," she said.
The senators called for Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to hold up Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director nominee Russell Vought’s confirmation vote until the Trump administration follows the law, Merkley said. During his confirmation hearing last week, Vought would not answer questions about whether he would allow the president to determine whether a congressionally allocated appropriation would be implemented.
Recognizing that the Democrats lack the power to block the vote, the senators are hoping to appeal to Republicans on constitutional grounds.
“What happened last night is the most direct assault on the authority of Congress, I believe, in the history of the United Sates,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said. “It is blatantly unconstitutional. Article 2 does not give the executive the power to determine budgets or expenditures. That power is vested in Article 3 in the Congress.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-N.Y., said Trump was seizing control of the federal budget and deciding by himself who should and should not receive federal money. He claimed Trump is pursuing the strategy for two reasons: to save money to afford his tax cut for billionaires and corporations, and to deny money to any organization or company run by Democrats who are competitors to Trump’s friends.
“This is what a king does,” Murphy said. “This is not how a democracy works. One man does not decide how taxpayers’ money is spent so that it only gets sent to the president’s political friends and it gets used to punish his political enemies.”
Sen. Murray said the Democrats are working with attorneys general in multiple states to determine next steps in the courts.
“I would say to all of the Republicans, we didn’t come here to go through a bunch of court orders about current law,” Murray said. “We came here to fight for our constituents to make sure that they have the basic things that they need every single day.”