Trump will activate a 48-year-old mechanism
In an extraordinary move not recorded in the United States since 1977, the Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump intends to use a rare legal tool known as "pocket cancellation" (Pocket Veto) to cancel nearly $5 billion in foreign aid and peacekeeping allocations approved by Congress.
According to the newspaper
Trump officially informed Congress of his desire to cancel these funds, in a move that is the latest in a series of his administration's efforts to reduce what it describes as "unnecessary spending" on international programs.
The "pocket
cancellation" mechanism is a controversial legal maneuver
- typically used in the late stages of the fiscal year (which ends September 30)
- and allows the president to stop funding specific items without the need
- for congressional approval, provided they are submitted
after the end of the period specified for examining these requests.
Target funds include:
$3.2 billion in development :
- aid through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),
- $322 million from the USAID-State Department Democracy Joint Fund
- $521 million for state contributions to international organizations
About $838 million is allocated to peacekeeping operations, of which $393 million is allocated to United Nations activities, and $445 million is under a separate item.
These funds
were previously frozen by decision of
the White House Office of Management and Budget, before they entered into a legal dispute filed by the World Health Council (Global Health Council) in protest against their freezing.
But the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, issued last Thursday, overturned the temporary ban, opening the door for Trump to implement his move.
The Trump
- administration noted that many of
- the projects covered by the funding
- are considered"extravagant" or "controversial,"
including:
- $2.7 million to a South African foundation credited with publishing racist content,
- $3.9 million to support democracy among the LGBT community in the Western Balkans,
And $1.5 million to market paintings by Ukrainian women.
The cuts also include support
for peacekeeping missions in hot spots such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the United States has recently been involved in mediation efforts with Rwanda, and the Central African Republic, where the UN mission is accused of siding with Russia's trade interests.
Among the canceled items:
$11 million to purchase armored personnel carriers for Uruguayan forces, $4 million for a training center in Zambia, and $3 million for military barracks in Kazakhstan. Financial support for the multinational monitoring mission on the Egyptian-Israeli border is excluded from the decision.
There is widespread
legal debate about the legitimacy of the "pocket cancellation" mechanism
- as the US Government Accountability Office (GAO)
- believes that this practice violates the Seizure Control Act of 1974
- which requires the president to follow formal procedures
including giving Congress 45 days to decide on cancellation requests.
The Trump
administration is relying on precedents from the era of
Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter
where the accounting office at the time allowed some appropriations to expire without objection. But today's legal situation is more complex, especially after
the Court of Appeal ruled that individuals do not have the right to file lawsuits based on this law, opening the door for the accounting office itself to take legal action against the decision.