Repealing the Impoundment Control Act is key to allowing the President of the United States to curtail spending, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) said during a discussion on Breitbart News Daily, previewing his plans to reintroduce the measure in the next Congress.
Clyde described the basic premise of impoundment — something that has been brought up lately in light of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gearing up to recommend cuts — as “helping to save the nation by reducing the spending of the federal government.”
“You think of impoundment like, you know, the impound yard where somebody takes your car. Well, we are impounding spending on a particular topic, many topics … impounding spending of a particular, you know, line of spending of the federal government,” he said.
“We’re impounding it so it cannot be further used. And that’s the whole idea here. You know, if Congress provides $10 million to the president to accomplish a certain program or a function, and he can do that, you know, for less money,” that should be able to happen, he said, explaining that there should not be a reason that the president has to use every single penny allotted to him for a particular program if he can realistically do it for less.
“Let’s say, instead of the ten million, he can do it for $7 million. There shouldn’t be a reason why he has to spend ten million on the program. He should be able to spend $7 million and save $3 million,” he said, explaining that Congress should provide the “ceiling in the amount that he can spend, not the floor in the amount that he can spend.”
“So that’s the whole point of impoundment and the 1974 Impoundment Control Act,” he said, noting that the measure essentially says that the president “must spend the money that Congress appropriates.”
“And there was a little back and forth there between the president and Congress, and the president didn’t necessarily want to, and Congress was afraid that he would withhold money for a specific program. Well, that’s not the point of it. It’s not to withhold money from a program so that the program doesn’t get accomplished. No, the president still must faithfully execute the law,” Clyde said, explaining that impoundment is about saving money.
“I don’t think we’re giving away our power of the purse because the power of the purse is like, you cannot spend more than this, but if you can spend less and be more efficient in doing it, then I would think the entire country would want that,” he continued, adding that the unused money would go back to the treasury to pay down debt.
“The President doesn’t have the authority to take that money and allocate it to another program, because that’s the power of the purge. That’s what Congress does,” he said, clarifying what this means for critics and explaining that he plans to reintroduce the measure in the next Congress.
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“I’m going to do that literally the first week of session that we are back in January,” he said, expressing hope that it will have “50 or 100 cosponsors on it.”
“I think it’s very, very important that we consider this bill and pass this bill,” the congressman said. “It will help the president bring spending back under control, because right now it is, it is wild.”
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