Congress has a chance to restore order, seize back their power of the purse, and stop Trump from “pocket-rescinding” hundreds of millions for good transportation projects.
by Kea Wilson
The Trump administration is illegally withholding money for desperately needed multimodal transportation projects — and Congress must act today to reassert its power of the purse and pass a budget that delivers communities the funds they were promised, a coalition of advocates demand.
In a letter to Washington lawmakers (onto which sympathetic organizations can still sign on by 4 p.m. Friday, Sep. 26.) a consortium lead by the National Campaign for Transit Justice accused the White House of conducting “illegal and unilateral” clawbacks to roughly $300 million in grants for safe, equitable, and sustainable mobility funded under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, America’s core federal transportation law.
The authors of that law made a fatal error of putting a three-year expiration date on key programs that benefit people outside cars. That sell-by date typically would have been more than enough time to finalize grant agreements between the feds and communities, but since the Trump took office, the Campaign says his administration has weaponzied what would normally be surmountable government bureaucracy — by running out the clock on programs it doesn’t like until the final deadline arrives when federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30 and wipes the money out.
Those delay tactics, the letter writers say, amount to a slow-motion coup over the will of policymakers and the American people they represent — and Congress needs to have the spine to fight back.
“Let’s be clear: These rescissions are not backed by the majority of Members of Congress or Senators, nor would they ever survive the legislative process,” the letter said. “That is precisely why the administration has resorted to circumventing Congress, breaking both precedent and the law in the process.
“This is not only a breach of public trust, but a constitutional crisis in real time,” the letter continued. “Arbitrary and capricious acts like these rip up the rule of law and undermine the very foundation of congressional power over the purse.”