As the chief executive of the U.S.
Government, the president is tasked with executing the law—the passage thereof
involving both the Congress and the presidency. It follows that a president
cannot legally stand in the way of appropriated federal funding of projects and
programs once such allocations have become law. For otherwise, a president
could simply ignore appropriations passed by the Congress and signed into law
by a previous president. The powers of the unitary executive would reach
dictatorial proportions. Within roughly one week of being sworn into office for
his second term in 2025, U.S. President Trump decided to pause all foreign aid,
and “grants, loans and other federal assistance . . . to ensure spending is
consistent with Trump’s priorities.”[1]
Those priorities, I submit, would properly have influence on bills in Congress
that were not yet laws, as per the legislative veto-power of the presidency and
the ability of a president to put pressure on members of Congress by speaking
persuasively directly to the American people. The value of leadership available
to a presiding role should not be ignored. In terms of symbolic leadership
befitting a presider in chief, refusing to enforce laws sends the wrong signal.
To be sure, delaying rather than cancelling funding that has
already been appropriated as law may fall within reasonable discretion that
goes with the executing, and thus executive, function. However, the size, or
magnitude, of the federal spending being held up but not cancelled may test the
test of reasonableness. This may also be so if the political dimension—that
is, the salience of political judgment in the issues involved—is significant.
President Trump “issued an executive
order for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of
efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.”[2]
At the time, the United States was the world’s largest international-aid donor;
in 2023, $68 billion was spent for this purpose. That number includes “everything
from development assistance to military aid.”[3]
Interestingly, military funding for Israel was exempted from the delay even
though the ICC had issued a warrant for Israel’s sitting prime minister for decimating
the civilian population of Gaza, the International Court of Justice (the UN’s
court) had ruled the occupation and military attacks by Israel to violate
international law, and Amnesty International had found sufficient, credible
evidence of genocide perpetuated by the Israeli government. If this exception
to the U.S. president’s 90-day delay—and Trump unfroze Biden’s hold on the delivery
of the 2000lb bombs to Israel because, Trump said, that country had bought them—reflects
Trump’s foreign-policy priorities, then the matter of selectively delaying
foreign aid cannot be reckoned as merely technical in nature; rather, the
salience of the political dimension means that even a 90-day delay could be unreasonable
without Congressional consent in the enacting of resolutions or even law.
With regard to pausing grants,
loans and other federal assistance—excepting Medicare and Social Security
benefits—again the sheer scale of the funding involved and the salience of
politics in the decision to delay test the limits to what is and is not within the
reasonable purview of executive discretion in executing federal law that includes
federal spending. “Diane Yentel of the National Council of Nonprofits said the
order could stop cancer research, food assistance and suicide hotlines.”[4]
If so, even a significant delay could be unreasonable as well as contrary to
the law concerning SNAP (federal food-assistance to 42.1 million individuals as
of the fiscal year 2023) because—to put it bluntly—an awful lot of people need
to eat on a daily rather than a monthly basis. Again, the president’s political-ideological
judgment here is arguably debatable (hence suggestive of a Congressional legislative
role even in the delay): delaying food assistance to Americans while exempting
military aid to Israel from delay. Both, and especially juxtaposed, are
contentious politically (i.e., ideologically). Furthermore, the memo delaying
domestic financial assistance, “signed by acting OMB chief Matthew Vaeth, calls
on government agencies to temporarily pause their financial assistance
[programs], so they can review spending that could be impacted by the various
orders Trump has signed” relating to diversity programs, “woke gender ideology,
and the green new deal.”[5]
It is difficult to square such overtly political reasons with a technocratic
delay in the execution of laws. Of course, this is a judgment call, for
the length of the delay is also a relevant factor. Aside from the financial
assistance to Americans bearing on sustenance, a few month’s delay may be
reasonable, but both the scale of the foreign and domestic funding and especially
the political rationales for the delay arguably make the delay a significant
political matter rather than merely an executive function in implementing law.
My assessment should not be
assumed to be in line with my own political ideology, for I oppose affirmative
action programs as being contrary to merit and woke “thought-police” as being
repugnant to free-speech liberty; I am not obliged to “give my personal
pronouns” (in fact, “one” is the neuter third-person singular pronoun in
English). I assume, moreover, that we are all human, all too human in fact, and
thus that none of us have a monopoly on truth to be imposed on others. My
point here is that the use of reason to dissect even a controversial issue, such
as presidential power in the U.S., should not cower to the bullying force of the
mind’s own ideology. Incidentally, this point is vital in distinguishing
between scholarship and opinion-pieces.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
