As Democrats raised concerns about programs like Medicaid going dark, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the Trump administration’s temporary halt on some federal spending.
The big picture: According to Leavitt, the freeze, which a federal judge stopped Tuesday, would not affect welfare benefits, Social Security, or Medicare.
Reporters were informed by Leavitt that the pause was necessary to make sure “every penny that is going out the door is not conflicting with the executive orders and actions that this president has taken.”
Nonprofits and groups that depend on federal funding, such as Meals on Wheels, were left frantically attempting to determine the impact of the freeze.
Quickly catch up: The heads of executive departments and agencies were given until February 10 to provide information about programs, projects, or activities that were subject to the indefinite pause, according to a memo from the Office of Management and Budget.
A senior political appointee should be assigned by agencies to supervise each federal financial assistance program and make sure it “conforms to Administration priorities.”
Madi Biedermann, a U.S. Department of Education spokesperson, told Axios in a statement that the freeze will not affect direct student loans or federal Pell Grants.
Yes, but: Democrats jumped at the chance to draw attention to the different programs that were impacted by the freeze, even though the administration claimed that aid “received directly by individuals” was unaffected.
Concerns raised by a multi-county domestic violence center were brought to light by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who wrote on X that “they may have to close their doors” in the absence of federal funding.
According to a post by Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), a number of agencies in his area have been “completely cut off.”
During the freeze, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote that his staff verified Medicaid portals were unavailable in all 50 states.
Later, Leavitt wrote that no payments had been impacted and that the White House was aware of the portal outage.
According to Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, the 18,000 recipients of housing vouchers “currently do not know how their rent will be paid next month, and workers across various federally funded programs risk losing their pay.”
Point of friction: The Impoundment Control Act, a 1974 law that requires presidents to release all funds appropriated by Congress, seems to be in conflict with Trump’s freeze.
The freeze, according to Leavitt, was “certainly within the confines of the law.”
The law permits presidents to postpone funding in certain situations, but it does not permit freezing funds to determine whether programs are “consistent with the president’s policies,” according to Samuel Bagenstos, a professor at the University of Michigan and a former General Counsel to the OMB.
Next steps: To compare the freeze to a government shutdown, Bobby Kogan, the Center for American Progress’s senior director of Federal Budget Policy and former member of the Biden OMB, advised: “It’s bad immediately, and the longer it goes on, the worse it gets.”
