U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, speaks with reporters inside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Sept. 29, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee said Tuesday the Government Accountability Office should sue the Trump administration over its efforts to freeze or unilaterally cancel spending approved by Congress. 

“I believe that GAO, which is empowered under the Impoundment and Budget Control Act of 1974 to sue in cases, should do so,” Sen. Susan Collins said. “The GAO has found seven instances in which the (impoundments) violate the act and it has standing to sue.”

Collins, R-Maine, also told reporters that she doesn’t agree with the Supreme Court’s decision last week on its emergency docket that allows the Trump administration to cancel $4 billion in foreign aid. 

“I disagree with the Supreme Court’s temporary decision, but it was not a decision that delved into the merits of the case,” Collins said. “That’s yet to come.”

Collins, one of the more vocal members of her party over preserving Congress’ constitutional power of the purse, said “Well, let’s see,” when asked if she expects the GAO, a government watchdog agency, would win a lawsuit over the Trump administration impounding funds. 

The GAO and White House budget office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Funds frozen for libraries, medical research, FEMA

Republicans in Congress have been either supportive or relatively quiet about the Trump administration’s efforts to freeze or cancel funding approved by Congress. 

The GAO has cited the Trump administration for illegally impounding funding for electric vehicle charging, museums and libraries, Head Start, energy efficiency upgrades in K-12 schools, funding for medical research at the National Institutes of Health and funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., released a statement earlier this week rebuking the Trump administration’s actions after the GAO released its seventh impoundment decision. 

“Today, we have another stark reminder of how President Trump’s lawless assault on our spending laws is hurting real people in every part of the country—as funding is held up to address homelessness, prepare for disasters, and much more,” Murray wrote. “It is time for Republicans to join us in insisting that every last penny that is owed to the American people gets out to the American people.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday reaffirmed its ruling from earlier this month that the Trump administration can withhold $4 billion in foreign aid, though the order notes the decision “should not be read as a final determination on the merits” of the case.

White House budget director Russ Vought wrote on social media shortly after the order from the emergency docket was released that it represented a “Major victory.”

The new nine-page order doesn’t provide any additional details about why a majority of the Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to rescind the funding without congressional approval. 

But it does include a dissent written by Justice Elena Kagan that was supported by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, highlighting the stakes in the case. 

“This emergency application raises novel issues fundamental to the relationship between the President and Congress,” Kagan wrote. “It arises from the refusal of the President and his officers to obligate and spend billions of dollars that Congress appropriated for foreign aid.”

The case, she wrote, brings up an issue the Supreme Court has never addressed.

“Deciding the question presented thus requires the Court to work in uncharted territory,” Kagan wrote. “And, to repeat, the stakes are high: At issue is the allocation of power between the Executive and Congress over the expenditure of public monies.”

Kagan noted that since the case came to the justices on the emergency docket, they had less than three weeks to consider it. 

“In a few weeks’ time—when we turn to our regular docket—we will decide cases of far less import with far more process and reflection,” Kagan wrote.

She goes on to disagree with the majority of the justices, saying the Supreme Court “should have denied this application, allowed the lower courts to go forward, and ensured that the weighty question presented here receives the consideration it deserves.”

Trump administration actions found illegal by watchdog

The ruling the Supreme Court posted Friday is similar to the one it released in mid-September when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. overturned a district court ruling that would have required the Trump administration to spend the money. 

The case now largely revolves around whether the White House budget office has the authority to send Congress a rescissions request during the last 45 days of the fiscal year, a maneuver the Government Accountability Office has called illegal. 

When the White House asks Congress to cancel previously approved spending through a rescission, lawmakers are supposed to have 45 days to approve, modify, or ignore the request. 

But Vought believes that any rescissions request sent up during those 45 days allows the White House to unilaterally cancel the funding, regardless of whether lawmakers agree or not. 

The Trump administration asked lawmakers to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and various foreign aid programs this summer through a rescissions request.

Lawmakers mostly approved that proposal after preserving full funding for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

The White House budget office then sent lawmakers a second rescissions request in late August, proposing they claw back billions of additional foreign aid dollars. 

Neither the House nor the Senate has yet to vote on that proposal. But the Supreme Court’s ruling allows the White House budget office to withhold the funding anyway. 

Democratic members of Congress react

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., issued a joint statement after the court’s ruling calling on their GOP colleagues to protect the institution’s power over spending decisions. 

“Congress can—and absolutely should—promptly reject President Trump and Russ Vought’s illegal effort to do an end run around the people’s elected representatives by passing a bill like the one we introduced last week,” they wrote. “Republicans should join Democrats to stand up for our power of the purse, rather than allow a president and an unelected bureaucrat who do not respect Congress or the Constitution to continue attacking our power to fight for the people back home that we represent.”