Trump and his top aides are placing calls urging undecided Republican lawmakers to support a spending bill that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced Saturday, three sources with knowledge of the calls told NBC News.
Vice President JD Vance will visit with House Republicans tomorrow during their weekly conference meeting, an additional source said.
To make holdouts feel more comfortable backing the bill, Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought have made assurances that they will use impoundment and rescissions in the future to claw back spending and have said they have begun working on a plan to do so.
The two legislative tools are rarely used because Congress, which controls the purse strings of the federal government, doesn’t like it when the executive branch doesn’t spend money it has appropriated.
Impoundment would allow Trump to delay or permanently cancel federal funding after it has been passed by Congress. Republicans brought up the idea of a rescissions package, which wasn’t successful in Trump’s first term, during lunch with Elon Musk last week. It’s also why most Democrats aren’t willing to provide votes for the GOP’s interim government funding bill.
Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said he had conversations with Trump’s team over the weekend, specifically Vought. Burlison said he was concerned about potential action from the courts.
Because the Supreme Court essentially upheld a lower court decision that forced the Trump administration to unlock $2 billion in frozen funds for the U.S. Agency for International Development and because the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 exists, Burlison suggested the courts could block the administration’s efforts to impound funds Congress already appropriated.
“What was concerning to me was some of these lawsuits and the recent court decision [on USAID], and so I needed to have that conversation, and I feel like they addressed those concerns with me,” Burlison said. “And so to me that was concerning because [of] this discussion of impoundment and whether or not that’s constitutional. So I’m looking for indications from the Supreme Court — that was not a good one.”
