More illegalities from Bushco!

[edhopper]

From the WSJ by way of Dan Gross' blog;

http://www.danielgross.net/archives/2006/03/05-week/index.html#000638


A White House proposal to cancel funding approved by Congress led federal agencies to illegally withhold more than $471 million for a dozen programs last year, according to Comptroller General David Walker.
Mr. Walker's findings come as President Bush has proposed similar "cancellations" of about $1.5 billion from prior appropriations, generating savings to offset new spending Mr. Bush wants in fiscal 2007, beginning Oct. 1.

While the funds were finally released in late December, the incident is sure to aggravate concerns in both parties that the White House is trying to weaken Congress's grip on the federal purse.

Mr. Bush's long-term fiscal strategy rests heavily on his ability to impose cuts on nondefense spending, and new data released late Friday by the Congressional Budget Office estimate that the president assumes $170 billion in five-year savings from this sector alone.

Adding to the pressure are the mounting costs of emergency spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there is a growing competition between finding funds to equip U.S. troops versus the resources needed to train and support security forces for the new Baghdad and Kabul governments. . . . .

For the past three decades, the rules of the budget road in Congress have been grounded in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which was adopted after years of fighting between lawmakers and President Nixon over his practice of unilaterally impounding funds appropriated by Congress. Under the law, future presidents were empowered to propose rescissions and withhold funds for 45 days while Congress considers the proposed cuts. If lawmakers don't approve the reduction, the money must be released.

Mr. Walker's account makes clear that didn't happen last year after Mr. Bush proposed in October to cancel funding to help offset the cost of recovery funds for the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The comptroller, who oversees the Government Accountability Office and is charged with monitoring impoundment issues, said that agencies withheld $471.4 million from a variety of defense, labor, agriculture, and environmental programs for as long as two months as the White House maintained that none of the "cancellations" came under the Impoundment Control Act.

Findings of such illegal impoundments are relatively rare. GAO officials pointed to a ruling in 2002 when the Bush administration withheld funds for a Homeland Security program; the rationale was to spend more slowly to achieve efficiencies. In the recent cases, the goal is more to kill the appropriations.

"Agencies may only withhold budget authority from obligation if the president has first transmitted a rescission proposal in a special message to Congress," Mr. Walker wrote to Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget. "Because the president's Oct. 28 proposal was not, according to your staff, a special message, the agencies we identified impounded budget authority in violation of the Impoundment Control Act."

Mr. Bolten's spokesman said that OMB staff never advised agencies to withhold funds and that the administration has specifically instructed agencies "not to improperly withhold funding in the case of cancellations." He added that "OMB is currently reminding agencies of that and we're looking into the instances" cited by Mr. Walker.



He shits all over Congress and they still won't impeach him!