Thread by @MattGlassman312

You may have heard that the Trump administration is considering proposing large rescissions to the just-passed omnibus spending bill.

politi.co/2GwjrPc

Here's why it's very unlikely to happen. [thread]

First off, what's a rescission? As the root ("rescind") implies, a rescission is when Congress, by law, cancels budget authority previously appropriated and currently available for obligation by the government. As with appropriations, rescissions can only be made by law.

How common are rescissions? Very common. Congress routinely includes them in annual appropriations acts, supplmental appropriations acts, and CRs. Here's an example of a targeted rescission from the FY2018 omnibus, rescinding previously appropriations from some DoD accounts.

People sometimes talk about the "rate reductions" in CRs as rescissions, but they are technically different, since they are reducing the amount of new appropriations relative to previous years, not actually rescinding previously appropriated budget authority.

The sequestration process ultimately involves rescissions, *across the board* rescissions. In effect, Congress passes a law that says "if we don't stick to the budget caps, then across-the-board rescissions take place." Again, done by law.

In a typical year, Congress rescinds billions of dollars. Here are the statistics compiled by GAO for 2011, 2010, an 2009.

Why rescind budget authority? Agency plans change, programs go new directions, things are needed, Congress reevaluates, costs come in cheaper, an so on and so forth. Budgeting isn't a science. Things happen. And, of course, the money may be needed elsewhere.

So what's special about presidential rescissions? In one sense, nothing. The president is always free to propose policy to Congress, just as they are free to ignore him. Agency budgets reflect administration priorities and often contain rescission proposals.

However, in the wake of the Nixon impoundment dispute, Congress passed the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act. This law gives formal presidential rescission proposals some legislative process advantages.

Among other things, the purpose of the Impoundment Act was to clarify that POTUS may not impound (i.e. refuse to spend) appropriated funds, as Nixon ha been doing. It does, however, setup a streamlined process for POTUS to request rescissions.

Under the law, POTUS may formally propose rescissions by message to Congress, which can choose to act or not. Crucially, however, the law sets up expedited procedures in both the House and Senate, limiting debate and the ageda-control of congressional leaders.

In effect, if a bare majority of the House and Senate want to carry out the rescission, they can get it on the floor and eventually secure a majority-rules vote, without having to overcome a filibuster.

Presidential-message rescissions are less common that congressionally-initiated rescissions, and Congress often doesn't go along. Reagan, 41, and Clinton used the process a fair amount, but W and BHO did not. Here are the POTUS proposals/$ and Congress accepted/$ for 1991-1994.

So flash-forward to this week. The administration is floating the idea of proposing $30-60B in rescissions to the FY2018 omnibus. In at least one sense, this is quite unusual: the omnibus was just passed. These rescissions can't reflect contingent changes in agency operations.

So what do they reflect? Mostly that the administration is unhappy with the deal they and GOP leaders cut on the omnibus. Recall Trump threatening to veto it an then giving that sad psuedo-signing-speech about needing to eat all the Democrat programs in order to get the troop $.

The key here is that the presidential rescission process in the Impoundment Act unlocks a process that can be used on a partisan basis, what @mollyereynolds would call a "majoritarian exception." So the rescissions could be passed in the Senate with only GOP votes.

That should be setting alarm bells off in your head. Appropriations, as a class of legislation, have no real way around a determined Senate filibuster. Cloture requires 60 votes. The Impoundment Act process, however, suggests a majoritarian way to revise a bipartisan deal.

In effect, any bipartisan appropriations deal could be downwardly adjusted by a partisan majority, post-hock, via presidentially-proposed rescission. Such use of these procedures is inherently going to raise concern on the Hill, all around.

And that's the first reason the current administration proposal is unlikely to pass: there's no way around the fact that they are (and plainly appear to be) an attempt to unilaterally go back on the deal struck in March on the omnibus. That's going to give Members real pause.

Why? First, because bargaining in Congress is a repeated-game. To unilaterally undo the largest appropriations deal ever made is going to poison the well for future negotiations, and everyone knows it. Trust between the current players---whatever is left of it--will futher fall.

But, you say, who cares? They already hate each other. There's still the big picture: resorting to a deal-then-rescind strategy, even once, will make *any* future bipartisan spending deal under unified government exponentially more complicated. Credible commitment will be lost.

You can see this concern with Senator Shelby, who's about to become Senate Appropriations Chairman.

So the problem of how this affects future dealmaking looms large. But that alone is probably not enough to sink these rescissions. Because there's a bigger problem: rescissions like this are going to be very unpopular, substantively.

In general, cutting government spending is a moderately popular idea, and among conservatives the abstract principle is wildly popular. But *specific* cuts to specific programs are far less popular. Why?

Because their negative effects can be felt by real people. And because those negative effects exist, real people form real groups to defend their interests, an those groups make sure that politicians feel the negative effects on their re-election chances.

In effect, abstract cuts have no organized constituencies against them. Specific cuts have well-organized, well-funded interests trying to prevent them.

It's a classic collective-action problem in that sense: the narrow, organized interest in preventing cuts vs. a plausible general majority in favor of the cuts.

Presidentially-proposed rescissions really drive this home, because the specific accounts to be cut are going to have to be name and specified in the message.

In addition, many key Senator votes are appropriators who may take particular exception to cutting money from *their* bill.

Murkowski is the chair of Interior subcommittee. She's against this already, citing what amounts to both explanations: they cut a deal, and that deal got a lot of her priorities in the bill.

Graham, who is the chair of the State-ForeignOPs subcommittee, is likewise not thrilled with the idea, also citing both the sanctity of the deal an his resistance to cutting things from his portion of the bill.

And this raises a secondary issue that hits all members, but particularly will hit appropriations leaders: did you not actually like the spending in the bill you voted for? Why did you vote for it? It's a bit disingenous of a question, but it's one that will come up.

In sum, the rescission process is a totally plausible way, in theory, to downwardly adjust the omnibus, but the consequences of doing so are risky, and the political will to cut specific programs just appropriated is probably not there.

This doesn't mean Trump won't propose them: there are obviously political benefits to him for just making the formal proposal (although they would have to be weighed against the negatives of the proposal failing). Likewise, Members may have incentives to push for a doomed vote.

But my guess is that we'll get neither, and the administration will just move on.