Introduction
President Trump has submitted his fourth rescission package, this time proposing to cancel $5 billion in previously approved spending. If enacted, the package would bring the total savings from rescissions this year to roughly $14 billion, a level of budgetary clawbacks not seen in decades.
What makes this proposal different from earlier rounds is its timing. Congress generally has 45 days to respond to rescission requests. This one, however, was introduced on August 28—just 33 days before the end of Fiscal Year 2025—and therefore runs headlong into the September 30 deadline for federal agencies to obligate funds before they expire. That unusual calendar quirk has led some to call it a “pocket rescission,” raising constitutional questions about whether a president can achieve spending cuts by simply letting the fiscal year close without congressional action.
What’s in the Latest Rescission Package
The pocket rescission targets foreign aid and international organization funding across the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This includes funding for democracy promotion, global peacekeeping operations, and climate-related development assistance. International organizations facing funding rescissions include the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the United Nations (UN). Many of the budget accounts impacted by the pocket rescission package have already seen modest clawbacks under the earlier Rescissions Act of 2025 signed into law on July 24.
In that previous rescission package, the Trump Administration sought to cancel $9 billion in unspent budget authority, focusing largely on foreign aid and low-priority domestic programs. Congress ultimately approved the package with slight modifications, marking one of the rare instances when rescissions have been enacted in recent decades. The Senate amended the rescission to remove a $400 million cut to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief from the final package, but the remaining savings such as cuts to non-emergency USAID and State Department accounts remained intact. This was the first rescission enacted since 1992 and the president has indicated he plans on introducing more going forward in a revival of a long dormant budget-cutting procedure.
Pocket Rescissions and the Power of the Purse
Under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), once a president submits a rescission request, Congress has 45 days of continuous session (calendar days minus any adjournments longer than three days) to act. If lawmakers fail to approve the request, the funding remains available for obligation.
The timing makes this rescission different from Trump's previous packages. It was submitted to the House of Representatives on August 28, 33 days before the end of Fiscal Year 2025 on September 30 when the funding targeted for rescission is due to expire. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that the 45-day clock for congressional review is projected to run until October 23, 2025 because the message to the Senate was not sent until 11 days later on September 8.
The administration argues that the ICA allows the president to withhold any budget authority proposed for rescission for 45 days of continuous session of Congress. Because the proposal runs into the fiscal year deadline, some have described it as a “pocket rescission.” The term suggests that, like a pocket veto, the executive can achieve an outcome simply by running out the clock on Congress. That interpretation has drawn sharp disagreement: GAO and other watchdogs have argued the ICA does not authorize unilateral cancellations and that the ICA does not supersede any other provision of law requiring the obligation of budget authority.
While the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) points to statutory ambiguity and argues the ICA does not limit when a president can submit a rescission request, OMB also stresses that the statute does not impose a requirement that withheld funds in a rescission request must be made available before the fiscal year ends.
In support of its case, OMB cited the bipartisan historical precedent for budget authority being withheld late in the fiscal year for which GAO had previously issued supporting opinions. GAO has since reversed those prior opinions in light of subsequent Supreme Court rulings that held that so-called legislative vetoes (whereby the president can do something unless either house of Congress objects) are unconstitutional.
The unresolved question is whether withholding funds until they expire at the end of the fiscal year effectively nullifies Congress’s power of the purse. The House and Senate could have considered the rescission package through a straightforward up-or-down vote, but the House never scheduled one. The concern now is that with the fiscal year ending, the proposed cuts could take effect without any congressional approval: an outcome that raises serious questions about whether the executive can unilaterally override the power of the purse.
It’s still an open question whether this kind of maneuver is legal, but it does stretch the limits of executive power against Congress’s role in controlling the purse strings. With the debt at unsustainable levels, there’s no doubt lawmakers should be cutting spending across the federal budget. But if presidents from either party start treating this as a shortcut around Congress, it risks setting a dangerous precedent. The better way forward is for lawmakers to take responsibility for the cuts themselves, so the savings are statutory, constitutional, and lasting.
Conclusion
The latest rescission request from President Trump promises billions of dollars in budgetary savings. Moreover, rescissions of prior unobligated funding improve transparency and honest budgeting, since Congress often uses these same rescissions as “offsets” to justify higher spending even though much of the unobligated funding would never be spent.
Yet the timing of this “pocket rescission” highlights both the ambiguities in the ICA and tensions over constitutional responsibilities. With federal debt at unsustainable levels, it may be tempting to look the other way when executive action pares back spending. But Congress’s power of the purse is not something to sidestep lightly, any more so than the traditional presidential rescission prerogative under ICA. If lawmakers are serious about reining in the deficit, they should fulfill their constitutional responsibilities to set spending priorities rather than cede the initiative on fiscal discipline to presidents by their own inaction. Taxpayers deserve both a government that spends less and one that respects the constitutional guardrails designed to keep spending in check.