President-elect Donald Trump’s budget-slashing allies will visit Capitol Hill this week, and their plans to block congressionally approved spending will test how jealously lawmakers guard their power of the purse.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will visit Capitol Hill on Thursday to meet with Republican lawmakers to discuss their proposals to streamline the federal government. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced the meeting will be about “major reform ideas to achieve regulatory recessions, administrative reductions, and cost savings,” in a post on X.

Trump allies have argued the president should be able to withhold payments of funds appropriated by Congress, despite limitations set under the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which requires the executive branch to spend all funds enacted by Congress. Musk and Ramaswamy, the leaders of the non-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency,” wrote that the law is unconstitutional and predicted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court would agree with them.

Trump will test Republicans’ commitment to their own control over federal funds. House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) isn’t gearing up for a fight with the president-elect over the Impoundment Control Act, though appropriators likely have a different view on Congress’s role in spending.

• “My job is to work with the president, not against the president,” Cole told reporters, saying he’s not familiar with Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s arguments on the law.

Some aspects of the argument aren’t going to go Trump’s way, though, Cole said.

• “The Constitution’s the Constitution — you can’t take away congressional oversight,” he told reporters.

Trump’s pick for budget director has been an enthusiastic critic of the Impoundment Control Act. Russell Vought warned on X earlier this year that passing Ukraine funding would serve as a trap for Trump, saying he’d risk violating “the unconstitutional & nonsensical Impoundment Control Act.”

In a February 2021 interview with Bloomberg Government about Trump’s fiscal philosophy, Vought said his think tank would advocate for greater freedom for the president to impound funds.

• “The executive branch often does not have the tools right now to be able to control waste and abuse because of the Impoundment Control Act,” Vought said.

Vought’s think tank, the Center for Renewing America, published a document on Nov. 21 saying congressional appropriations are a ceiling for spending — not an outright directive.

• Enacted appropriations laws “effectively set the spending ceiling for the federal government,” the document says. “Impoundment is merely the President’s power to decline to spend the full amount of what Congress appropriated.”

The Biden administration is preparing for another stopgap measure to fund the government through February, extending the current Dec. 20 deadline. The White House sent lawmakers a request for an additional $24 billion in funding for Ukraine, as part of a list of “anomalies” — or changes to current law — in an upcoming stopgap, Roxana Tiron reports.

House Republicans had discussed a stopgap running in March before leaving for the Thanksgiving break, though no concrete plan had formed.

The Biden administration’s Ukraine anomaly request called for $16 billion to replenish US weapons stocks and $8 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

It also asks that lawmakers include language to avoid automatic spending cuts under the Pay-as-You-Go Act of 2010, which would hit in January 2025 and require a $1.7 trillion cut of direct spending, including a 4% reduction of Medicare funding, the document says.

The administration is also seeking an anomaly for nearly $5 billion in advance procurement funds for the Columbia-class submarine, and $1.6 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.

• Read the Request
• BGOV OnPoint: Congress Returns for Short Lame-Duck Sprint

— With assistance from Roxana Tiron.