Impoundment. A term anons should familiarize themselves with as it's reversal during 47's term is going to have a tremendous effect on the stranglehold that bureaucracy, lobbying, and unfettered frivolous spending has metastasized as a powerful unchecked malignant force within the government.
The above link to the legislature and legalese can be hard to wrap your grey matter around but in short, it essentially forces the government to spend money rather than opting not to. Everyone's heard of spending limits, but really there is no ceiling. The limits are the floor rather. You must spend at least X amount and if you go over that's fine too.
Russel Vought discusses and breaks down the elimination of Impoundment back in the 70s, essentially creating an unchecked fiscal apparatus of the government that is the root cause of so much systemic corruption thereafter. It's also how omnibus bills were created in the first place! So by reversing the Impoundment Act, you eliminate these 10,000 page bills filled to the gills with completely unrelated allotted spending not even associated with the bill being presented!
Now this frog eats crayons, but I was either ignorant to this law or had forgotten about it since the 90s or early 00s. Impoundment is right up there near the tippy top of subjects that are verboten to speak of in politics or MSM dating back to the sabotaging of Ross Perot, Pat Buchannon, and Ron Paul's political aspirations and subsequent strife.
After listening to Russ and TC discuss this, it would seem that the reversal and reconstitution of Impoundment is going to play a major role in DOGE, draining the NGO swamp, and when paired with tariffs and other economic reform one can easily see how this has the potential to completely reset the board fiscally, perhaps even at the Federal Reserve level. I thought it pertinent for this board to get familiar with the term so that we can see the forest for the trees. Impoundment is on the menu yugely in the future frens. Might as well get brushed up on the subject and understand that historically (before 1973) that it was what kept the NGO swamp in check and also allowed the government to simply say No, we won't be spending any money on that.
Nixon used this a lot in an effort to bring spending under control and it was part of the one line veto discussion. Congress objected. Congress was Democrat controlled and had been for 50 years. Jefferson was 1st pres to impound.
Time was spending bills were comprised of two steps. First an authiorization bill which set the limit on what could be appropriated. These went through the committees that had jurisdiction over the department or agency and was where laws pertaining to the agency could be changed. Then the appropriation bill would decide the actual amount appropriated. Rules would apply. No legislating in an appropriations bill but amendments could be added which would prohibit expenditures on things like the Vietnam War.
No legislating could be done on a conference report. In the house no non-germaine amendments could be attached. No amendments could be attached to continuing resolutions.
The congress couldn't control itself so they passed the budget act, which has led to the total sh*tshow we are dealing with now. Massive whole budget bills with no examination of department or agency performance. Now we have oversight instead. Reviewing an agency's performance came during the money process which is the most powerful weapon in the arsenal. Like, hey DoJ why are you holding untried prisoners for years for trespassing? No money for that activity or for arresting people for silent prayer.
That also got the public involved for specific issues. Made a difference.