00:00Senator Van Hollen. Thank you. Thank you, Senator. Welcome, Director Vogt. In response to a question that Senator Murray asked earlier about pocket rescissions, you cited a 1970 statement, 1975 statement by GAO in the aftermath of a rescissions package that was advanced by President Ford.
00:23I think it's important to point out for the record that in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision in Clinton v. New York, which, as you know, was a line item veto case where the court said, quote, there is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, amend, or repeal statutes, unquote.
00:44The GAO found that in the absence of congressional action, a rescission proposal would remain just that, a proposal. And that's why GAO later revised its view subsequent to that Supreme Court decision.
00:59Can I speak to that, Senator?
01:00I got to go on, Mr. Vogt. If there's extra time and I'm granted it, I'd be happy to have you respond. Would you agree that federal agencies are required to follow the law, including the appropriations law, as Senator Collins referenced?
01:16Yes. I also believe that the president has the ability to run every program as efficiently as possible. And what's interesting about what GAO has said,
01:26GAO has changed its view with regard to pocket rescissions. They changed their view every administration.
01:31What they did, what Congress did not do in the aftermath of the legislative veto being struck down is they did not, in fact, change the Impoundment Control Act. Congress has never, knowing this was an issue, has never changed the law.
01:45Mr. Vogt, as I said, at the end of my time, if you're given additional time by my colleagues, I'm happy to have you expound on that.
01:53But I think what GAO was saying was that the Supreme Court decision, in the language I quoted, essentially filled the gap in the Impoundment Control Act by making that clear separation of powers argument.
02:04But my question was whether or not you federal agencies had to comply with appropriation bills.
02:11And one of those provisions is something that I authored that requires OMB to show the American people, American taxpayers, how we are spending their money by requiring OMB to publish the apportionment documents.
02:28This is not an optional provision. The system was operating for three years. The language is clear. It says OMB shall operate the system, not may, not when it feels like.
02:43So, Mr. Vogt, why did you terminate the system, given the fact that this is the law of the land?
02:49The administration thinks it's unconstitutional, that it gets to the deliberative process and pre-decisual information, the extent to which when a president using his tools at OMB is managing taxpayer money, and many of these are not final agency decisions, the extent to which that is being forced to be reported on a website, our administration believes that that's unconstitutional.
03:13Do you have a legal opinion expressing that view?
03:17We certainly have transmitted from the Department of Justice the views as it pertains to this. Our general counsel has articulated our grounds for this opinion.
03:26Mr. Vogt, I think given the fact that it's a congressional provision that was put in there by law, it was also enacted, signed by previous presidents, it is the law of the land.
03:38I have not seen any memo from the administration declaring it unconstitutional or the grounds for it being unconstitutional, so I welcome providing that.
03:48I want to get to another issue regarding the GAO because, as you know, they found that the administration was illegally impounding funds from two accounts and that there are three dozen ongoing investigations about other withholdings.
04:05I've heard what you had to say about GAO, and I'm not going to ask you to repeat your views about GAO, but what I want to know is whether or not you plan to spend the dollars that were appropriated for the state electric vehicle infrastructure deployment plans and the Institute of Museum and Library Services programs.
04:28Simple question. Are you planning to spend those monies as required?
04:32You know, it's an interesting thing about GAO is they never had an issue with regard to President Biden withholding funds with regard to the border war.
04:40Mr. Vogt, I just asked you a question. They changed their position constantly.
04:43Are you planning to spend the funds?
04:45We're going through a programmatic review. We will look at our options under the law with regard to that funding. Each set of funding is different, as you know. And we will be continuing to evaluate that program.
04:56The GAO is improperly calling programmatic review impoundments. They've now done it, I believe, two times. I expect them to do it many more times.
05:07But it will not change the reality that these are not impoundments.
05:10Mr. That's why you're answering a different question, right? I didn't ask you to comment on the GAO rationale. I happen to agree with their rationale. You disagree.
05:19I asked you a much more simple question. When do you plan to spend these funds? Do you plan to spend these funds before the end of the fiscal year?
05:26Well, Senator, your question, the GAO statement was the predicate for the question. I didn't feel like I can answer the question without dealing with the predicate.
05:34I'm just going to ask you a straight question with no predicate. Do you intend to spend the monies that were appropriated by the Congress for these two programs?
05:41We are considering the programmatic aspects of that program. We know that we have options under the law, including a potential rescissions bill.
05:51We have a lot of different things that we can look forward to with regard to how we might approach those fundings, various statutory ideas.
06:01And we will take a look at all of the tools that are on the table for the purposes of those funds. But we're not ready here to say that we're done with our programmatic review.
06:11And GAO, quite frankly, is improper to continue to call it an impoundment.
06:16Well, we have a difference of opinion on that. But my question again was this issue about spending the money.
06:21And Madam Chair, I appreciate that. And I'm going to follow up with you directly because I know you asked questions about whether or not the administration was required to
06:31apply appropriations law, which I think we both agree it is. And we obviously have a difference of opinion here. So I look forward to following up with you.
