White House Memo on EV Grants Sets Up Fight Over Spending Power

The White House forcefully rejected a congressional watchdog’s opinion that found the Trump administration illegally delayed funding for electric vehicle infrastructure, setting the stage for a broader constitutional clash over federal spending powers.

In an eight-page memo Tuesday, the White House budget office instructed the Department of Transportation to “pay no heed whatsoever” to the Government Accountability Office.

The memo sets up a potential showdown over the president’s role in freezing spending authorized by Congress. During his campaign for the White House, Donald Trump promised to challenge the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act, a 1974 law that forbids presidents from holding back spending for policy reasons.

It also reflects a strategy of publicly discrediting institutions like GAO and the Congressional Budget Office, which act as referees in fiscal policy debates. The White House has cast doubt on the economic projections that the CBO has used to score the cost of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” a massive tax-cut proposal moving through Congress, but has declined to release its own growth numbers.

Read more: Can Trump Refuse to Spend What Congress Tells Him To?: QuickTake

The first test of the legal theory about the Impoundment Act could come over the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a key initiative of former President Joe Biden included in the 2021 infrastructure law. The Trump administration paused those grants Feb. 6 as it rewrites Biden-era guidance on charging-station spacing and equity goals.

GAO, an arm of Congress responsible for oversight of federal spending, concluded last month that the delay in distributing the formula-based grants to states constituted an impermissible impoundment under federal budget law.

The White House disagrees, sharply questioning GAO’s motives and legal standing. “GAO has become a partisan actor, issuing opinions based on double standards designed to undermine President Trump’s historic and lawful spending reforms,” wrote Mark Paoletta, general counsel at the Office of Management and Budget.

Paoletta suggested that executive agencies “should not feel compelled to cooperate at all with GAO in its efforts to thwart President Trump’s agenda” — a pronouncement that could stymie GAO in its mission to help reduce inefficiency in government.

Sarah Kaczmarek, GAO’s managing director of public affairs, said the agency “disagrees with OMB’s assertions.”

“We stand behind our analysis and conclusion for both the appropriations law issue for recording obligations in the NEVI program and the illegal impoundment of funds under the ICA,” Kaczmarek said in a statement. “GAO’s work in this area, as with all of GAO work, is non-partisan, independent, and consistently follows a process that allows agencies to provide their views.”

The memo lays the groundwork for a broader defense of Trump’s aggressive approach to budget cuts as he seeks to shift the balance of spending powers toward the president.

Russell Vought, Trump’s OMB director, is scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Appropriations Committee, where he’s expected to face questions on a wide range of efforts to rein in federal spending.

On Tuesday, the administration sent to Congress more than $9 billion in rescissions — targeting foreign aid, public broadcasting, and other programs — as part of a legislative maneuver to enshrine Trump’s so-called DOGE cuts, named for the Department of Government Efficiency formerly led by billionaire Elon Musk.

Read More: White House Asks Congress to Slash NPR, PBS, Foreign Aid Funding

While the rescissions use a legal fast-track process with a 45-day deadline, Trump advisers have also floated a controversial theory dubbed the “pocket rescission,” which could allow funding to expire if the White House times its requests at the end of the fiscal year. GAO has warned that such maneuvers risk violating the law’s requirement for “sufficient time to be prudently obligated.”

The NEVI dispute also echoes earlier fights over presidential budget authority, including Trump’s 2019 pause on Ukraine security aid and Biden’s halt to border wall construction in 2021. In both cases, GAO weighed in with opinions that further cemented its watchdog role — a role now under attack.

In a social media post last month, Vought attacked GAO for playing “a partisan role” in the Ukraine decision. “They are going to call everything an impoundment because they want to grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt,” he said, calling GAO decisions “non-events with no consequence.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
Gregory Korte in Washington at gkorte@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Mario Parker at mparker22@bloomberg.net

Sarah Halzack, Meghashyam Mali

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