Lesson Plan: Who Controls the Purse? Presidential Power and the Fight Over Spending
Grades 9-12
The Trump administration’s attempts to freeze or cancel billions of dollars in federal spending have reopened a constitutional debate over the power of the purse – Congress’s authority to appropriate taxpayer money. At the center is impoundment, an executive maneuver to withhold funds that Congress has appropriated. This short doc revisits the last major impoundment clash, under President Richard Nixon, which led to the passage of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. With federal courts now weighing in and Congress divided over the current administration’s actions, legal scholars and historians explore what’s at stake when a president challenges the laws that govern federal spending.
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