Donald Trump clearly considers himself king, or more likely dictator. His few brushes with our constitutional system of representative democracy haven't gone too well from his perspective—Russia sanctions passed with veto-proof majorities, Obamacare repeal scuttled—so it appear that he's going to take what action he can to diminish congress's authority. He's ignoring their spending directives.
Lawmakers and activists are preparing for the possibility that President Donald Trump's administration, in its zeal to slash the federal budget, will take the rare step of deliberately not spending all the money Congress gives it—a move sure to trigger legal and political battles. […]
"We've seen just too many instances these past few months ... where there is clear congressional intent and funds provided, yet an unwillingness or inability to act," Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement to POLITICO. […]
Any attempt by Trump officials to avoid spending money on ideological grounds would face legal roadblocks, budget experts note. [...]
The law allows the executive branch to request permission from Congress to not use certain funds. But it also says any such request must offer lawmakers a specific and pragmatic rationale for holding on to the money. A general claim that the administration wants to shrink spending won't pass muster, experts said.
The primary and immediate concern by congressional Democrats and external advocacy groups is the shrinking State Department. Trump's budget would cut roughly one-third of the State and the U.S. Agency for International Development budgets. While that budget was dead-on-arrival in Congress, the administration shows every inclination to make those cuts anyway. And there's shit like this:
And in one sign of his mentality toward federal spending, Trump thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month for ordering the U.S. embassy in Moscow to cut its staff by hundreds of people, “because now we have a smaller payroll.” State Department officials were furious over Trump’s remarks, which he later said were sarcastic.
Dozens and dozens of State Department positions are going unfilled, many of the 364 out of 587 key federal jobs requiring Senate confirmation with no nominees. An exception, however, is Eric Ueland who's been nominated to a key State position probably because he has exhaustive knowledge of the budgeting process and can figure out how to gut the State Department financially and do it within the bounds of federal law. He's a former Republican Senate budget staffer, and according to Jim Manley, a long-time aide to former Senate Leader Harry Reid, "is stone-cold evil. […] Very few, if any, people know how to manipulate the budget rules for better or worse than Eric. If anyone's looking for him to do the right thing, you're looking at the wrong guy."
But beyond State, all advocacy groups and plenty of members of Congress are looking at that Trump budget and worrying about what he intends to do—or not do—with the funding they appropriate. It seems pretty unlikely at this point that he's going to let little things like traditions, norms, or even the law curtail him. But that doesn't mean he can't be sued by the U.S. comptroller general for refusing to spend funds arbitrarily. As with everything else going on with Trump, this isn't going to end prettily.