Have You Heard of “Pocket Rescissions”?

The quip, "You had one job" earns laughs, but it applies unironically to the United States Congress. Their "one job," though obviously complex, is to make laws. One of the most important facets of lawmaking is creating and overseeing an annual budget for government programs and services.

Congress is the only branch of government with the ability to tax and spend, a capacity known as "the power of the purse." In this critical role, members of Congress analyze studies and data, prioritize projects and services, and negotiate their way to an agreed-upon budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which runs from October 1 through September 30.

Rescissions are a legislative tool that allow Congress to cancel funds that were previously approved but have not yet been spent or legally committed. This process was formalized by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA), which was passed to answer the Nixon administration’s overuse of impoundment of funds and to ensure a check on future administrations’ overreach. The ICA outlines how both the president and Congress can initiate rescissions and establishes specific procedural guidelines.

Under a presidential rescission:

• The president sends a special message to Congress proposing specific cuts.

• Congress has 45 days of continuous session to approve all or part of the request.

• The rescission package can pass in the Senate with a simple majority vote — it is not subject to the 60-vote threshold typically required to advance legislation.

• If Congress does not act within 45 days, the funding must be released and spent as originally planned.

Although presidential rescissions have been used infrequently during the last 25 years, a presidential rescission package passed in July 2025.

The regular rescission process becomes complicated when a president attempts to revoke funding when there are less than 45 days left in a fiscal year. This is called a "pocket rescission," and its timing makes it problematic. If a rescission request is made less than 45 days before the end of a fiscal year, the requester knows the funds will expire before Congress has time to act. It functionally freezes the funds until the new fiscal year when they are no longer available.

The most recent pocket rescission was submitted by the first Trump administration in 2018. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) — a nonpartisan, independent agency that helps Congress oversee the ICA and related issues — evaluated the 2018 pocket rescission and reached an official ruling that it amounted to an illegal impoundment of funds. 

While the GAO made it clear in their decision that pocket rescissions are not permitted, the current Office of Management and Budget disagrees, citing the president’s ability to submit them since Congress technically has 45 days to respond. This fails to acknowledge that the funds will revert back to the Treasury within that time period.

Pocket rescissions should not be confused with the more familiar "pocket veto," which is a legal maneuver by U.S. presidents. Unlike pocket vetoes, however, pocket rescissions are more similar to unconstitutional "line-item vetoes" in that pocket rescissions have not passed legal tests. While this topic causes controversy among legal scholars, the precedent remains that pocket rescissions involve a president’s intentional inaction toward deadlines and are not allowed. 

Ultimately, Congress holds the power to check the executive branch in budgetary overreach. If the legislative branch allows the president to use pocket rescissions to cancel allocated funding, it undermines Congress' own constitutional power over the purse and cedes it to the executive branch. Additionally, when the executive's preferences override constituent input, public trust in the budget process is weakened. Unilateral presidential rescissions discourage bipartisan budgeting and compromise, making any attempts to negotiate during the budgeting process meaningless.

Congress must push back against pocket rescission attempts and preserve its own rightful role as the branch that creates laws and controls the budget — its "one job."

This article was written by Sherilyn Stevenson, lead researcher and writer for Mormon Women for Ethical Government.