The White House on Friday night informed Congress that it intended to cancel about $810 million that lawmakers had approved for education and health-related programs, its latest attempt to use a legally untested power to unilaterally rescind spending without the approval of lawmakers.
The 12-page notification, sent to lawmakers and viewed by The New York Times, builds on a $4.9 billion clawback of funds that lawmakers approved for foreign aid programs that the Trump administration set in motion last year.
Both times, the administration waited so late in the fiscal year to make the request that lawmakers would not have time to reject it before the funding expired.
The fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, before the 45-day period when Congress is required to consider a rescission request from the White House. Republicans could bring the matter to a vote sooner, but House lawmakers are set to be campaigning until the midterm elections in November.
The rescissions appear to target pots of funding that have the weakest constituencies on Capitol Hill, including $25 million of $52 million appropriated for migrant students.
They would also affect $27 million for health research under the Department of Health and Human Services.
The proposal was immediately criticized by lawmakers in both parties.
“This move shows that O.M.B. intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement, referring to the White House Office of Management and Budget.
She added: “Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of Congress’s appropriations powers. O.M.B. is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding.”
Ms. Collins said that she would work with her colleagues “to address these illegal actions.”
Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, also blasted the proposed move.
“This is theft from the American people, plain and simple,” she said in a statement. “These are funds Congress has delivered on a bipartisan basis and should be helping people, not cut off by a president more focused on building a ballroom than investing in families. Every Republican who voted for these bills should be furious.”
