President Trump signed the bloated omnibus budget allowing over $1Trillion of new spending and pork. He must have something up his sleeve - I wonder if it is this. From Infogalactic:
Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Balanced Budget Act
The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 and the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Reaffirmation Act of 1987 (both often known as Gramm-Rudman) were "the first binding spending constraints on the federal budget".
The Acts were named after Senators Phil Gramm (R-Texas), Warren Rudman (R-New Hampshire) and Ernest Hollings (D-South Carolina) who were their chief sponsors.
A bit more:
The Acts aimed to cut the United States federal budget deficit, which at the time, in dollar term, was the largest in history. The Acts provided for automatic spending cuts ("cancellation of budgetary resources", called "sequestration") if the total discretionary appropriations in various categories exceed in a fiscal year the budget spending thresholds. That is, if Congress enacts appropriation bills providing for discretionary outlays in each fiscal year that exceed the budget totals, unless Congress passes another budget resolution increasing the budget amount, an across-the-board spending cut in discretionary expenditure is automatically triggered on these categories, affecting all departments and programs by an equal percentage. The amount exceeding the limit is held back by the Treasury and not transferred to the agencies specified in the appropriation bills.
That would certainly take the wind out of their sails and be a perfectly legitimate action.
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