President Donald Trump made no secret of the fact that he wasn’t pleased with the $2.3 trillion government spending and coronavirus relief package passed by Congress last week — and while he begrudgingly signed the bill in a stunning move late Sunday, the president is still saying no to a number of “wasteful items” that he says “need to be removed.”
The president made his grievances about the legislation known in a statement released by the White House on Sunday wherein he invoked a little-known law to demand that changes be made, U.S. News reported.
“As President, I have told Congress that I want far less wasteful spending and more money going to the American people in the form of $2,000 checks per adult and $600 per child,” Trump said.
“I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed,” he continued.
Wasteful budget items
The president went on cite a relatively obscure piece of legislation called the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, saying he would “send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill.”
The House Budget Committee’s website explains that under the ICA’s provisions, “the President may withhold certain funding in the affected accounts for up to 45 legislative session days.”
It notes, “The ICA requires that the President send a special message to Congress identifying the amount of the proposed rescission; the reasons for it; and the budgetary, economic, and programmatic effects of the rescission.”
“It really is a disgrace”
On Saturday evening, Trump retweeted a video that he released last week calling for individual stimulus checks of $2,000 and decrying “the wasteful and unnecessary items” that been added.
“It really is a disgrace,” he complained. “For example, among the more than 5,000 pages in this bill, which nobody in Congress has read because of its length and complexity — it’s called the COVID relief bill, but it has almost nothing to do with COVID.”
“Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists, and special interests, while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it,” he added.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson also attacked the legislation during his show’s monologue Tuesday night, noting the amount of money allocated toward foreign aid and politically correct causes.
The legislation “spends huge amounts of money to diversify the workforce in our so-called intelligence community–that’s another key national security objective,” Carlson said sarcastically.
The post Trump invokes obscure law to redline wasteful items after signing huge bill first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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