President Donald Trump's early moves to control spending test authority of Congress

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : Trump has argued he has power over government spending and since his Jan. 20 inauguration has signed a flurry of executive orders aimed at reshaping federal policies and spending to align with his priorities, including eliminating DEI and other progressive programs.
47% : Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) claimed a victory in the first fight of Trump's new term over control of federal spending.
45% : In 2018 during his first term, Trump sent a recission resolution to Congress that proposed to block $14.8 billion in spending for 34 appropriation accounts.
43% : " Congressional Republicans this past week were largely supportive of the funding freeze and have said Trump should have more authority over the nation's purse strings.
41% : He said, "I think the question is: Will they be satisfied with retreating to more legally defensible positions or are they going to rise or fall on this, as with the Muslim ban in the first Trump administration?" Trump's push to wield more power over federal spending got a boost Thursday, when Senate Republicans advanced the nomination of Russell Vought to serve again as director of the Office of Management and Budget for a full floor vote.
40% : WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump is moving quickly in his second term to expand his presidential reach, insisting that he has the authority to freeze and determine federal spending, an assertion Democrats called a "power grab" to erode Congress' power of the purse.
40% : " Shawn Donahue, a political science professor at the University at Buffalo, said while Trump is pushing for more authority over spending, he could be opening the door for a future Democratic president to wield that same power.
39% : Legal experts and policy analysts interviewed by Newsday said Trump appears to be teeing up a legal battle in a bid to overturn the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which requires the president to spend Congress' appropriations or seek its permission to halt funding.
36% : Schumer said Democrats are bracing for Trump to continue testing the Impoundment Control Act, which a Democratic controlled Congress passed after Nixon refused to spend nearly a third of the discretionary spending Congress had approved.
31% : "But when the American people see what's going on and we made our voices heard, Trump had to back off.
30% : But Congress did not approve it, according to the General Accounting Office, and Trump didn't challenge that in court then. David Super, an administrative and legislative law expert at Georgetown Law in Washington, D.C. called the freeze Trump ordered "a big overreach."
29% : Vought played a significant role in the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025," the hard-line conservative guidebook of policy initiatives Trump sought to distance himself from during the presidential campaign.
27% : "Donald Trump tried a total budget power grab," Schumer told Newsday in a phone interview.
23% : Trump and his White House Office of Management and Budget nominee Russell Vought have long said the 50-year-old act Congress, passed to stop President Richard Nixon from impounding federal funds, is unconstitutional.

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