How Trump uses federal cash that’s not his to spend to pursue his questionable goals

[Thiệu Ngô]

Donald Trump seems to view federal funds like a personal presidential piggy bank.

Analysis By Stephen Collinson

His warning Tuesday that some furloughed workers may not, as is customary, get back pay when the government shutdown ends was the latest sign that he regards public money sent to Washington by taxpayers and the states as a personal slush fund to spend as he sees fit.

He’s happy to entertain spending on programs he favors — for instance, vast bailouts for farmers routed by his tariffs or rescue plans for friendly global populists like his friend President Javier Milei of Argentina.

But when the bill comes due for things he hates, or for projects important to his political foes, Trump can be remarkably stingy.

In the past, Puerto Rican hurricane victims, Democratic states seeking disaster aid, Californian officials who ignore his forest management advice or “sanctuary cities” that resist his deportations have faced threats to their funding.

And the administration has used the threat and reality of canceled state funding for research to try to force universities such as Harvard and Columbia to submit to its ideological and policy requirements and to end practices it considers “woke,” like diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Trump sees federal cash as a weapon in shutdown fight

Trump’s willingness to use the budget as a weapon has only intensified since the government shut down last week.

First, Trump — who has already enjoyed purging the government bureaucracy under the Department of Government Efficiency in his second term — threatened Democrats with more federal layoffs. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs,” the president said last month. This is not true and has never been the case in shutdowns that took place under previous administrations.

On Tuesday, Trump raised the possibility he’d choose which workers got back pay in another attempt to pressure Democrats to vote to reopen the government.

“I would say it depends on who we’re talking about,” the president told reporters when asked about a memo first reported by Axios that suggested furloughed workers need not be paid. He warned of “some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of.” At the weekend, the president vowed one category of federal employees definitely won’t go short — service personnel.

“We will get our service members every last penny,” Trump said at an event in Virginia celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Navy. “Don’t worry about it, it’s all coming,” he added.”

In another attempt to punish Democrats for not voting for a short-term bill to keep government open, the administration threatened to withhold $18 billion in federal funds previously awarded to New York City for two huge infrastructure projects — the Second Avenue subway extension and new Hudson River rail tunnels. It’s no coincidence that the two top Democrats in Congress, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, represent New York. The White House also froze almost $8 billion for climate projects in 16 states, all but two of which have Democratic governors.

So how does the White House justify what appears to be blatant politicization of federal cash?

When its budget office warned of mass firings because of the government shutdown, it said it would target workers whose mission doesn’t match Trump’s personal priorities. “We’re looking at agencies that don’t align with the president’s values” and “that we feel are a waste of the taxpayer dollar,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week.

Her comments underscored a misunderstanding or deliberate misinterpretation of the president’s constitutional role and powers. They reflected the dominant and erroneous view inside the West Wing that the president has all but unlimited powers and the authority to do exactly what he wants.

The White House is flouting a constitutional principle that every American kid learns at school: that Congress, not the president, has the power of the purse.

Trump’s attempts to redirect or simply freeze funding doled out by lawmakers — including in previous congresses — have resulted in fierce clashes with the courts. In the first days of the administration, for example, a judge halted an attempt by the Office of Management and Budget to freeze federal grants. Judge Loren AliKhan said the administration had “attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it.”

Trump can’t just use tariff money as a slush fund

Trump’s inclination to ride roughshod over Congress’ power to dictate how federal revenue is spent was also evident Tuesday when the administration announced a plan to use proceeds from Trump’s tariffs to pay for a federal food assistance program for nearly 7 million pregnant women, new moms and young children while the government is closed. “The problem isn’t that they don’t have the money — it’s that Congress hasn’t told them they can spend it,” Chris Towner, policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told CNN’s Tami Luhby.

So far, the White House’s threatened layoffs to punish Democrats for the shutdown have not materialized, and it is unclear just how serious it is about playing favorites with furlough payments. CNN’s Alayna Treene and Annie Grayer reported Tuesday that the timeline of the move had been extended amid fears that it could backfire and weaken Trump’s position in a showdown that has not so far delivered the swift political triumph he apparently expected.

But the threats alone offer key insights into Trump’s personality and leadership style that are defining the unprecedented character of the administration he leads.

In business and in life, Trump has tended to view every personal and professional encounter as a contest, a chance to impose his own strength over weaker interlocutors. He often casts around for any leverage at his disposal to wrong-foot an opponent. This is always on display in his televised encounters with Cabinet members and even foreign leaders. On Tuesday, for example, Trump’s meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney went well, given the bad blood that the president has stirred with America’s great friend and northern neighbor. But he couldn’t resist joking about his claims, which infuriated Canadians, that they should join the US as the 51st state.

And the president’s first impeachment, in his first term, was triggered by his attempts to use weapons financed by Congress to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into future president Joe Biden and his family.

This constant grasping for leverage explains Trump’s equally coercive use of federal funds to try to get his way. The money sent to Washington by federal taxpayers is just another form of political weapon.

Of course, Trump is not the first president to use federal funds as leverage. Many presidents have sought to do so to enforce their policy priorities. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, for example, used vast amounts of federal aid to incentivize states to cooperate with his policies. But in most cases, he was seeking to alleviate poverty and rescue a devastated economy rather than pursuing political vendettas.

More recently, Republicans complained when President Barack Obama used federal funding as a carrot for states to adopt his education policies. In the previous presidency, Democrats accused President George W. Bush of withholding funding to schools and districts in some states that did not meet terms and standards required by his No Child Left Behind Act. And presidents and congressional leaders have long used the pressure of federal largesse and pork spending to sway critical votes. Still, such practices and controversies pale in comparison to the blatant funding antics pursued by Trump.

The closest equivalent was probably Republican Richard Nixon, whose attempts to recoup federal funds already appropriated by Congress provided a blueprint for Trump’s own efforts more than 50 years later.

Nixon aimed to halt federal housing programs and reduce disaster aid and other programs after his reelection in 1972. And he refused to dish out part of $24 billion in funds Congress planned to spend under the Clean Water Act. As a result, Congress passed a law to outlaw a president’s use of a practice known as impoundment.

Trump’s attempts to claw back funding from Congress to match its priorities haven’t always been successful, and he has suffered some reversals in the courts. Sometimes congressional pressure has worked; for instance, in the case of nearly $7 billion in education spending released by the administration in July.

But there’s no reason to think a president who sees life as a win-loss equation will stop using cash to which he’s not entitled to land his political goals.