‘Funny way to treat your friends:’ Republicans miffed with Trump’s threats to ignore funding

Republican appropriators are alarmed that the White House is open to unilaterally freezing cash Congress could approve in September, if lawmakers overshoot President Donald Trump’s latest budget request.

It marks a shift for top Republicans in charge of writing government funding bills, who have largely hesitated to speak too harshly against the president’s funding freezes this year.

As defense hawks on Capitol Hill demand far more funding than Trump is seeking for the military, the president’s willingness to withhold congressionally approved cash — known as “impoundment” — is widening the rift between the White House and GOP lawmakers ahead of the fall fiscal cliff and increasing worries of a government shutdown.

“I’ve got a real problem with impoundment,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the House Appropriations panel that funds the EPA and the Interior Department, told reporters this week.

“That’s like a line-item veto, and I think it's illegal,” Simpson said. “That will be a challenge, for sure.”

Withholding federal money is nothing new for Trump, who has spent months freezing billions of dollars signed into law on former President Joe Biden’s watch despite lawsuits challenging the tactic. It goes back even further, with Trump's impeachment in 2018 tied in large part to his decision to hold back military aid to Ukraine. But it would be considered far more radical for the president to defy congressional leaders from his own party by locking up congressionally approved funding after nine months of total GOP control in Washington.

Several senior Republicans decried Trump’s budget proposal last week to keep the military’s funding flat in the upcoming fiscal year while piling on $150 billion more through the party-line package Republican leaders are endeavoring to pass this summer, which is far from guaranteed.

Asked during a call with reporters what Trump would do if lawmakers approve more military funding, a senior official with the Office of Management and Budget said impounding federal cash is always an option.

“Obviously, we have never taken impoundment off the table, because the president and myself believe that 200 years of the president and Executive Branch had that ability,” said the OMB official. “But we're working with Congress to see what they will pass, and I believe that they have an interest in passing cuts.”

Republican appropriators will soon embark on writing the dozen funding bills for fiscal 2026, which starts in October. Traditionally, they consider a president’s budget request a mere suggestion for how to craft those measures, throwing around the old saying: “The president proposes, Congress disposes.”

That principle would be upended, however, if the White House withholds funding in excess of the budget request, rather than just using the threat of impoundment to influence Congress’ funding decisions.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said he understood the White House’s strategy: “If I were them, I would too,” he said of the administration’s leveraging of the threat of impoundment.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capitol (R-W.V.), a top Senate appropriator and a member of GOP leadership, wasn’t so sure.

“I mean, if that's a pressure campaign, I get that,” she said this week. “If that's reality, I think that there's some fundamental questions there. So that kind of surprises me, actually.”

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), another senior appropriator, had a similar reaction to the White House leaving open the possibility of withholding funding that the Republican-led Congress clears in the coming months.

“That’s a funny way to treat your friends,” he said in an interview.

The threat of impoundment could undermine the foundation of bipartisan funding negotiations, with Democrats arguing that it’s useless to negotiate if Trump isn’t going to spend the money as Congress prescribes.

Republicans need Democratic votes to pass their funding bills in the Senate. And with less than five months to go until the next shutdown deadline, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — who was derided earlier this year for helping pass a Republican-crafted funding package — is now under pressure to at least fend off Trump’s desire for Congress to cut non-defense programs by more than 20 percent.

At least one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said he wasn’t surprised by how things are playing out. He predicted that Trump’s ultimate objective is to get the nation’s highest court to rule that the 51-year-old impoundment law is unconstitutional.

“I think the goal is the Supreme Court,” said Paul, who publicly told a top official from the White House budget office last month that he doesn’t think Trump “can impound direct funds indefinitely” under the Impoundment Control Act.

“It's a reasonable question to ask. And it's never been all the way to the Supreme Court,” Paul, a staunch advocate of limited government, said this week. “And of course, everybody has to adhere to what the final decision will be.”