Congress, the president and the power of the purse
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 February 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Several executive orders and actions by President Donald Trump order a freeze of federal funds that Congress has already approved. But according to the Constitution and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the president doesn’t have the authority to do that unilaterally. We’ll explain. But first, could a sovereign wealth fund help buy TikTok? And later, the climate crisis could shave off nearly $1.5 trillion in property values over the next 30 years.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If Congress votes to spend, can a president stop it? I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, President Trump says he's creating a sovereign wealth fund. He says that federal fund could buy TikTok. Here's Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Gensar. A sovereign wealth fund invests government money in things like real estate, stocks, and bonds. |
| 0:22.2 | Other countries like Saudi Arabia and Norway have sovereign wealth funds where they invest |
| 0:26.7 | their government surpluses from sales of oil and gas, but the U.S. has a deficit. |
| 0:33.0 | It's not clear where the money for a sovereign wealth fund would come from. |
| 0:36.3 | Congress would probably need to authorize funding for it, wealth fund would come from. Congress would probably need |
| 0:37.8 | to authorize funding for it, and that would take time. TikTok needs to find a new owner by this April, |
| 0:44.2 | and TikTok users are also skeptical of government control of the platform. I'm Nancy Marshall |
| 0:49.8 | Ginsburg for Marketplace. Staying with the power of the purse in America and a president's authority to |
| 0:55.6 | carry out executive orders. This includes whether President Trump and his people can freeze |
| 1:00.6 | money that's been authorized by Congress. It's about the Constitution and something called the |
| 1:04.9 | impoundment control act of 1974. Marketplaceplaces Samantha Fields explains. |
| 1:15.0 | For a chaotic, confusing couple of days last week, it looked like the Trump administration was about to halt federal spending on all sorts of programs, including possibly housing |
| 1:20.4 | vouchers, low-income heating assistance, Medicaid, Head Start. But after widespread outrage, |
| 1:26.3 | lawsuits, and two court orders, the Office of Management |
| 1:28.9 | and Budget rescinded its memo ordering that spending freeze. Congress authorized that money to be |
| 1:34.4 | spent, and it is not up to the president to decide, I don't want to spend it. Sally Katzen at |
| 1:42.0 | New York University School of Law says the Constitution gives Congress |
| 1:45.7 | what's called the power of the purse, not the president. And that means that when Congress has |
| 1:51.8 | appropriated funds, they should be spent on what Congress had in mind. In addition to the |
| 1:59.7 | Constitution, David Super at Georgetown Law School, |
| 2:02.7 | says there's also the impoundment control act of 1974. The Impoundment Control Act was something |
| 2:08.4 | that Congress passed during the Nixon administration to deal with his desire to impound |
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