The Government Accountability Office says President Trump cannot cancel more than $800 million approved by Congress by withholding the money until it expires.
Trump sent Congress a request Friday to rescind funding from 11 federal accounts. The request arrived five days before the end of the fiscal year, leaving Congress without enough time to consider it before the money expired on September 30.
“The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote Tuesday.
[NOTE: Under the Impoundment Control Act, a president can ask Congress to cancel previously approved spending and temporarily withhold the money while lawmakers consider the request. Congress has 45 days of continuous session to act; if it does not approve the cancellation, the administration must release the funds.]
In Trump’s case, the congressional review period would not end before November 9—weeks after the money was scheduled to expire. The White House called the maneuver a “pocket rescission,” but the GAO said the law does not allow a president to use the review period to run out the clock.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez wrote.
U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the attempted cancellation “a con and nothing short of an assault on our Constitution.”
“President Trump is breaking the law and stealing from the American taxpayer,” Murray said. “He knows it, and the top nonpartisan government watchdog just confirmed what we’ve known all along: this so-called pocket rescission scheme is illegal.”
Congress passes a law to fund health care research, housing, and more. The President signs it into law. Now Trump wants to illegally refuse to spend it, STEALING from the American taxpayer.
A top nonpartisan government watchdog agrees: this is ILLEGAL. https://t.co/cVmyCBhBwr
— Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) September 29, 2026
The White House says the targeted programs are wasteful or harmful and do not benefit American citizens. More than $560 million was approved for Health and Human Services programs serving refugees, asylum seekers and other noncitizens.
Other funding targeted by Trump includes education programs for migrant students, housing counseling, grants for minority-owned businesses and a Justice Department office created to help communities address racial and ethnic tensions.
“President Trump is committed to utilizing all possible tools to cut wasteful and harmful government spending that does not benefit American citizens,” the White House said when it announced the rescissions.
The GAO said its conclusion did not express an opinion about any of the programs Trump wants to eliminate. The decision addressed who has the legal authority to cancel the money.
Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Ranking Member on the House Appropriations Committee, said the administration was “unilaterally freezing these funds until they can no longer be used.”
“This funding was signed into law by the President after being approved on a bipartisan basis, by Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate,” DeLauro said of the housing-counseling money included in the package.
The GAO’s decision does not itself compel the White House to release the funds. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said he expects the dispute to reach the courts, even though “many of us agree with” some of the proposed cuts.
“The process by which they did it is going to be, I assume, subject to a lot of discussion and probably some litigation,” Thune said.