{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.murray.senate.gov/republicans-block-democrats-bill-to-stop-trump-from-robbing-the-american-people-with-pocket-rescissions/", "Republicans Block Democrats\u2019 Bill to Stop Trump from Robbing the American People with \u201cPocket Rescissions\u201d", "2026-09-30", "2026", "2026-09", "Democrat", "Senate", "WA", "Patty Murray", "M001111", "www.murray.senate.gov", "murray", "https://www.murray.senate.gov/category/press-releases/", "scraper", "***WATCH: Senator Murray\u2019s remarks***\n\nWashington, D.C. \u2014 Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joined Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, in seeking unanimous consent to pass a commonsense bill to stop President Trump from robbing the American people through illegal \u201cpocket rescissions.\u201d\n\nBut Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) blocked the bill, which would (1) nullify the illegal \u201cpocket rescission\u201d that President Trump announced on Friday and (2) prevent the president from attempting to use a \u201cpocket rescission\u201d again by forbidding any president from submitting rescissions requests under the Impoundment Control Act with fewer than 90 days before the funds expire. This ensures Congress can act on the request and presidents cannot try to simply run out the clock.\n\nDemocrats have repeatedly sought to bar the Trump administration from so much as attempting this illegal maneuver\u2014when marking up draft Senate spending bills, in votes on the floor, and in negotiations over spending packages, including negotiations over the continuing resolution that was recently signed into law. But Republicans have rejected every Democratic attempt over the last 18 months to enact new protections against pocket rescissions.\n\nSenator Murray\u2019s remarks ahead of the attempt to pass the bill, as delivered, are below:\n\n\u201cThank you to my colleague from Oregon for setting out what is going on here because, as he said, on Friday night, President Trump announced that he was stealing more money from the American people. Trump and his budget director Russ Vought call it a \u2018pocket rescission.\u2019 Well, whatever you call it, it\u2019s illegal.\n\n\u201cTrump is taking the bipartisan funding that we passed\u2014funding that Democrats and Republicans agreed on, that he signed into law\u2014and he is now ripping out the pages he doesn\u2019t like. Forget about ideas like Congress and the law.\n\n\u201cLook, this is theft from the American people\u2014plain and simple. In this case, Trump is tearing away funding to help Americans buy a home, he\u2019s cutting off funds for health care research which would prevent things like dangerous hospital infections that are dangerous or saving taxpayers literally billions of dollars.\n\n\u201cBut you know what, Trump could not care less. While he blows your tax dollars on an illegal war, Trump is illegally cutting off funding for health research, housing, and more.\n\n\u201cAnd I guess that\u2019s no surprise given how this President is constantly out-of-touch with American families, saying \u2018tariffs\u2019 is his favorite word, ore saying he loves inflation, or saying he wants housing costs to go up\u2014he said that.\n\n\u201cBut where are my Republican colleagues who helped pass these funds that Trump is now stealing? Because this didn\u2019t come out of left field. No one can pretend to be surprised by what is happening now.\n\n\u201cWhen Russ Vought was nominated as Trump\u2019s budget chief, he was pretty darn transparent about the fact that he planned to break the law, he planned to tear up our bills, and he dared us to stop him. But that didn\u2019t stop every Republican Senator from voting for him\u2014and when his deputy was nominated and told us this summer that pocket rescissions were very much still on the table, what happened? Once again, every Senate Republican voted to confirm him too.\n\n\u201cAnyone watching could see this coming from a mile away\u2014Trump used this scheme to unlawfully impound $5 billion last summer, for heaven\u2019s sake. That\u2019s why Democrats have fought again, and again, and again, to prevent the president from being able to use this illegal tactic, including in recent negotiations over the CR that\u2019s now law.\n\n\u201cBut Republicans have refused to work with us to prevent Trump and Russ Vought from stealing from the American people. Time, after time, after time, they have shot down our attempts to stop this administration from defying Congress and robbing our constituents.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s talk more about this \u2018pocket rescission\u2019 scheme for a minute and what\u2019s at stake. President Trump and Russ Vought are saying: \u2018Hey, we can ignore the law, we can ignore bipartisan deals, and just make our own decisions, as long as we do it last minute.\u2019\n\n\u201cEveryone knows that is ridiculous and illegal. Congress would never have created a system that gave any President the ability to decide to just ignore or bypass a law.\n\n\u201cIt makes no sense. And in fact, GAO has looked at what this President has done and has said it\u2019s clearly illegal\u2014twice. Now, my Republican colleagues know some of this, some of them have even said so. But whenever they have had the chance, they have not joined us to put an end to this. Democrats had language Republicans could have let us put in the last CR, or the CR before it.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve taken vote after vote on versions of this language\u2014on the floor, and in committee\u2014and, of course, we had the vote where Republicans confirmed the un-abashed architect of Trump\u2019s illegal scheme as Budget Director.\n\n\u201cWell now they are getting one more chance. Senator Merkley and I and others have a bill to help Congress re-assert its authority\u2014our authority\u2014and head off Trump\u2019s completely illegal pocket rescission scheme.\n\n\u201cWe should be clear: Trump isn\u2019t just illegally robbing our constituents through this pocket rescission. There are a whole lot of other funds that he is refusing to get out the door: more health research funding, grants to prevent teen pregnancy, funding to protect Americans from global health threats, and even a quarter of a billion dollars to help families in rural areas get the financing they need to finally achieve their dream of owning a home.\n\n\u201cHundreds of families in rural America will be denied the shot to buy a home as Trump lights this money on fire tonight.\n\n\u201cSo, it\u2019s not just the pocket rescission\u2014it\u2019s all the rest of the money this administration is holding up or misspending. And Republicans have been pretty quiet about it.\n\n\u201cRuss Vought has always made his message to Congress painfully clear: he thinks the votes that we all take here don\u2019t count. He thinks the laws we pass are optional.\n\n\u201cNow is the time for our Republican colleagues who said they would never let this happen to help us pass a bill that makes our message to Russ Vought equally clear: stop stealing from our constituents and start following our laws.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-10-01T11:23:28Z", "2026-10-01T11:25:15Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.murray.senate.gov/republicans-block-democrats-bill-to-stop-trump-from-robbing-the-american-people-with-pocket-rescissions/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7585738785564899, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}