What is Trump's alternative way to cut spending despite legislative obstacles

The economic agenda that President Donald Trump chose to pursue in January when he assumed his second term as President of the United States raised one flag above all others:  the flag of fiscal adjustment. 

From that perspective of the discussion, Congress and especially the House of Representatives emerged as a challenge for the president's agenda. Although the party controls both chambers, the majorities are narrow and there are internal differences that could hinder the progress of the project. 

After it became clear how much of a complication Congress poses for the pace at which Trump's administration seeks to reduce spending, the White House began to develop the idea of a rarely used and politically sensitive tool.

There are several ways through which Congress can cancel funds that have already been allocated in the current fiscal year's budget. However, only one of them allows the avoidance of parliamentary obstruction (filibuster) in the Senate:  the rescission process established in the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (CBA, by its acronym in English).

According to this law, if a president wishes to annul spending items previously authorized by Congress in that year's discretionary appropriations laws,  he must send a formal notification to Capitol Hill proposing which funds should be canceled. 

From that moment on,  the president is authorized to withhold the specified funds for a period of 45 days of "continuous session" of Congress.  If at the end of that period Congress and the president do not formally approve the rescission measure, the administration, as long as it complies with federal budget law, is required to release the withheld funds.

The truth is that Trump's administration wants to reduce the size of the state, but at the same time the votes to turn those spending cuts into law are not there, since not all Republicans are aligned. Although the party controls both chambers, the majorities are narrow and  there are internal differences that could hinder the progress of the project in its remaining stages. 

In March of this year,  only half of Republican senators voted in favor of Senator Rand Paul's proposal that sought to cut funds for USAID, the international cooperation agency, called “S.Amdt. 1266 to H.R. 1968: To reduce the amount appropriated for the United States Agency for International Development.”,

Among the most urgent spending cuts the administration seeks to achieve after yesterday's victory in the lower chamber are the resource packages transferred  to international aid programs such as USAID  or public media such as NPR and PBS. 

While the law allows the president to propose the rescission of funds already approved by Congress, the effectiveness of that process has historically been limited.  Since 1974, only two presidents have formally attempted it: George H.W. Bush, successfully in 1992, and Trump himself, unsuccessfully in 2018. 

It remains to be seen how the Republican administration's strategy to dismantle the system evolves, which in just 30 years saw its debt level rise from 4.9 trillion in 1995 to 7.9 trillion in 2005, to 18.1 trillion in 2015, and 33.1 trillion in 2025. Something many see as unsustainable.