by Adam Pack
As the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned, President-elect Donald Trump plans to redirect unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act to infrastructure spending.
“President Trump will quickly defeat inflation and lower prices across the board, ending the Democrats’ anti-energy crusade that will cut energy prices in half in his first 12 months in office,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition to Vance, told DCNF in a written statement. “It will also end the Green New Scam and rescind all unspent funds from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and redirect them to real infrastructure spending.”
So does the Biden-Harris administration rushes to formally commit tens of billions to IRA funding before Biden leaves office, President-elect Trump is pressing ahead with plans to repeal the IRA and redirect all remaining spending from Biden’s climate law to infrastructure spending. The recent Trump administration’s vow to reprogram remaining IRA funding could face legal challenges due to congressional reallocation limits, and failure to spend funds as directed by Congress could violate the Nixon-era budget law, which forces the executive branch to spend money appropriated by Congress.
Russ Vought led OMB for the first time under Trump and will hopefully do so again. Here’s what he learned about how deep state actually works.
(0:00) What is the Office of Management and Budget?
(7:57) How our Intel agencies overrule the president
(29:21) What will Congress do… pic.twitter.com/vl9au8UwU7— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 18, 2024
Potentially billions in unspent IRA funds
The IRA, which took votes along party lines without Republican support, appropriated almost $105 billion in “climate” spending. The Biden administration does not appear to be on track formally commit that huge sum before President-elect Trump took office, which could give Trump control over tens of billions of dollars remaining in IRA funds when he returns to the Oval Office in January.
According to the EPA, the Biden-Harris Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could leave the Trump administration with at least $3.5 billion in unspent IRA funds, including more than $1.5 billion in “environmental justice” grants. press release on Aug. 16, which said the agency was on track to transfer more than $38 billion from IRAs by Dec. 31.
“Based on the findings of the Energy and Trade Committee arrangements so far, I hope [EPA] Administrator [Michael] Regan would not take the extraordinary step of rushing to distribute more than $1.5 billion in so-called “environmental justice” grants in order to obfuscate groups with only the vague accusation of talking about environmental issues and teaching other organizations how to apply for more grants,” Virginia Republican Morgan Griffith, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, said in a written statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
EPA spending on “environmental justice” grants within an IRA has dealt According to Extended, hundreds of millions of dollars to leftist advocacy groups under the guise of environmental justice reporting regarding agency grantees from DCNF.
The EPA declined to comment on DCNF’s inquiry about whether the agency plans to announce additional grants and formally transfer remaining “environmental justice” IRA funds to nonprofits before Trump takes office.
🚨Last year, the EPA selected Climate Justice Alliance, a Berkeley, California-based nonprofit, to receive a $50 million grant despite the entity promoting the “defund the police” movement.
CC: @elonmusk, @VivekGRAmaswamy, @DOSE pic.twitter.com/BtaTg5ioRf
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 25, 2024
Restoration of the president’s office in charge of confiscations
Trump announced he would reverse Biden’s decision $1.2 trillion climate law and void all funds not spent during the campaign, calling the IRA the “new green scam” in speech in September at the New York Economic Club. Neither Trump nor his team have previously commented on the recent administration’s plan to redirect unspent IRA funds to infrastructure spending.
This could be ensured by Leavitt’s promise that the president-elect would seek to reprogram all unspent funds for infrastructure spending. topic the recent administration faced prosecution for violating the IRA and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022, an omnibus bill that appropriated the expansive majority of IRA funds, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Climate Change Law Center. Sabina at Columbia University Law School.
Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 set According to a Sabin Center analysis, a 10 percent cap on the reprogramming of IRA funds could limit the president-elect’s authority to divert all unspent IRA funds to “real infrastructure” spending.
Trump could also seek to withhold unspent IRA funds, which would directly undermine the 1974 Impoundment Control Act (ICA), which requires the executive branch to spend the entire amount allocated to Congress.
“When I return to the White House, I will do everything in my power to challenge the Seizure Control Act in court and, if necessary, urge Congress to repeal it. We will overturn it” – Trump he said in a campaign video promising to restore the president’s authority to confiscate congressional funds in June 2023. “Affirming the president’s historic confiscation authority will also restore key negotiating power with Congress to keep spending under control. Very simple. We will keep expenses under control.”
“Mr. Trump has previously suggested that this bill is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court will likely side with him on this issue,” Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, advisers to the president-elect at the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE). he wrote in the November 20 Wall Street Journal.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are right.
Article II gives the President the power to confiscate.
OUR PAPER: https://t.co/y7E5nvXEmm https://t.co/s7VqmW9cBk
— Center for American Renewal (@amrenewctr) November 20, 2024
Russ Vought, Trump to choose head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, which also served during the president-elect’s first term, claims that the ICA unconstitutionally infringes on the executive branch’s authority to confiscate Congressional funds, according to several interviews took part this year.
“For 200 years, presidents have been able to not spend Congressional appropriations,” Vought told Tucker Carlson in an interview interview November 18. “The power of the budget means that Congress sets a ceiling – you can’t spend without Congress appropriations – but you were never supposed to be forced to spend it – and it became a floor. “
“Resuscitating the president’s forfeiture authority will be a key tool in curbing overspending, reducing inflation, and dismantling an awakened and armed bureaucracy that targets the American people,” he added. entry on the president’s confiscation powers, published on November 21 by the Trump-aligned Center for American Renewal.
Democratic resistance likely
Democratic lawmakers would almost certainly challenge the administration’s authority to confiscate congressional funds and would likely oppose the Trump administration’s proposal to redirect unspent IRA funds to infrastructure spending.
“The legal theories pushed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are as idiotic as they are dangerous,” said Pennsylvania Democrat Brendan Boyle, a member of the House Budget Committee. he wrote in a press release following the publication of the Musk-Ramaswamy WSJ article. “Unilaterally cutting funds that have been lawfully appropriated by the people’s elected representatives in Congress would be a devastating power grab that weakens our economy and puts families and communities at risk. House Democrats stand ready to oppose any illegal attempts to gut programs that keep American families safe and help them make ends meet.”
Trump’s transition team did not respond to a DCNF inquiry about whether “real infrastructure” spending includes border wall infrastructure. Especially Trump redirected nearly $10 billion in the Department of Defense budget for border wall infrastructure on the southern border during his first administration.
Then President Biden redirected more than $2 billion of these funds will be returned to Department of Defense projects in June 2021. Biden OMB he claimed that “building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border and costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars is not a serious policy solution or a responsible use of federal funds.”
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Adam Pack is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
