President invokes a budget maneuver last used in 1977 to cancel $4.9 billion in foreign aid.

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 was passed because President Nixon refused to spend money Congress had appropriated. The act sets out a specific, narrow procedure by which a President may propose to rescind funds. The proposal goes to Congress. Congress has 45 days. If Congress does not act, the funds must be spent.

A “pocket rescission” is a different maneuver. It is the act of submitting a rescission proposal so close to the September 30 fiscal-year deadline that the funds will expire before the 45-day window runs out, regardless of whether Congress acts. The Government Accountability Office has held, in writing, that this maneuver is unlawful. It circumvents the explicit text of the statute. It was last attempted in 1977. It has not been attempted since.

On Friday, the President sent a letter to the Speaker of the House proposing 15 rescissions, totaling $4.9 billion, against accounts at the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other international assistance programs. The timing was designed, by the OMB’s own admission to subsequent reporting, to ensure the funds expire before the 45-day clock runs.

The reaction by close of business: bipartisan pushback. Senator Susan Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the action unlawful. Senator Patty Murray called it unlawful. Several House Republicans expressed concern.

A serious country has a body called Congress. A serious country also has an executive branch. The two were designed by the founders to disagree, in writing, in public, on how money is spent. The disagreement is the system. The pocket rescission is not a clever procedural workaround. It is the unilateral assertion that one of the two halves of the system can simply outlast the other on the calendar.

It worked once. In 1977. Carter tried it. The GAO told him no. Nobody tried it again. We are now trying it again, on the strength of the same legal theory, against the same statute, with the same agency on file as having said no.

Calmly documenting the decline.