U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and her fellow Senate Appropriations Committee leader chided President Donald Trump’s budget chief Thursday after Trump went around Congress to cut nearly $3 billion from a federal spending law.
Trump issued a memo Monday saying he did not agree with 11 appropriations that total about $2.9 billion and stem from a 2023 debt ceiling agreement led by then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California. Trump criticized it as a “side deal with the Democrats” and left in place the remaining five appropriations worth about $9.4 billion in emergency spending that continued under the six-month stopgap funding bill Congress approved this month.
Trump made his move this week to cut the spending that was mostly for foreign aid at the recommendation of Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, whom Collins and Senate Republicans voted to confirm last month. It is the latest sign of how Trump and his top advisers are complicating things for Collins after she has touted her ability to win money for Maine and after she rose to chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee following the November elections.
Vought, the architect of the conservative “Project 2025” playbook, has advocated for Trump’s moves to aggressively cut government jobs and agencies and to go around Congress on certain spending decisions. Collins said last month she viewed Vought as qualified given his past role as OMB director during Trump’s first term and believes presidents are “entitled to broad discretion when selecting Cabinet secretaries.”
But in a Thursday letter to Vought, Collins and Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray, D-Washington, said language requiring the president to either agree with all or none of Congress’ emergency declarations has been used in appropriations bills for decades, including during Trump’s first term. They also said collaboration “will become even more challenging” when they first learn of Trump’s moves through the press, as was the case after national outlets first reported Monday on the plan to cut the nearly $3 billion.
“We are concerned that sudden changes to OMB’s interpretation of long-standing statutory provisions could be disruptive to the appropriations process and make it more difficult for the Appropriations Committee to work in a collaborative fashion with the Administration to advance priorities on behalf of the American people,” Collins and Murray told Vought.
Collins and Murray also said that if the administration did not believe the funding was needed, then it should have submitted an “anomaly” request to leave it out of the continuing resolution Congress passed earlier in March to avert a partial government shutdown.
House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, said he supported the Trump administration’s decision. Various Democrats joined Collins and Murray in criticizing the move to reportedly cut foreign aid, economic development money slated for the nations of Moldova and Georgia and diversity, equity and inclusion projects. House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, said he supported the Trump administration’s decision
“Just as the President does not have a line-item veto, he does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate,” Collins and Murray told Vought. “This interpretation is consistent with congressional intent and is the most logical and consistent reading of the law.”
