In a 1985 memo to the White House’s top lawyer, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that a president may not block congressionally required spending — a declaration on a major legal question that now seems destined to move from the Trump White House to Roberts’ Supreme Court.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s administration issued an order declaring that “all agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance.” The directive — which sowed chaos throughout the country’s Medicaid and Head Start programs — was temporarily stayed by a federal judge. But the dispute over spending authority has created a constitutional crisis that is likely to be appealed up to the high court.
Roberts already outlined his views on such powers during his tenure in President Ronald Reagan’s White House Counsel’s Office.
In a 1985 communiqué unearthed by The Lever, Roberts weighed in on a question from Reagan’s Staff Secretary David Chew about a president’s alleged power to block — or, in budget terms, impound — spending legislated by Congress.