Impoundment Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Impoundment was a historic power used by presidents of the United States to not spend funds appropriated by Congress. Successive chief executives used the authority to avoid expenditures that they disagreed with or believed were unnecessary. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson initiated impoundment when he delayed spending $50,000 that Congress had voted to fund the construction of fifteen naval gunboats to patrol the Mississippi River. Jefferson believed there was no immediate security threat on the river and that efforts to control the national debt precluded increased defense expenditures. He deferred funding the gunboats for a year. Franklin Roosevelt was also notable for his use of impoundment. Presidents argued that impoundment was one of the inherent powers of the office. In 1974, in response to the repeated use of impoundment by Richard M. Nixon in an effort to reduce public spending, Congress enacted the Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which ended the practice. Henceforth, presidents were allowed only to recommend the recession of a specific expenditure, which then had to be approved by both the House and the Senate. The loss of impoundment was one of the motivators behind efforts to enact a line-item veto power for the president.

Bibliography:

Neustadt, Richard. Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. Rev. ed. New York: Free Press, 1991.
Whittington, Keith E. Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001.

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