Trump's spending pause? Biden did it first

President Trump’s decision to hit pause on billions of dollars in federal spending spawned an avalanche of complaints from his opponents on Tuesday.

But when President Biden did the same thing four years ago, halting all border wall construction, those same voices were silent or, in many cases, actively cheering his move.

Mr. Biden’s experience gives a taste of what Mr. Trump is likely in for, with the former president’s actions still the subject of legal challenges and political fallout years later.

The upshot was that Mr. Biden’s pause was deemed to be legal, so long as it was focused on making sure the money was spent properly. But he was warned that an indefinite pause would cross the line into an illegal “impoundment” of congressionally approved spending.

That would be the question for judges as legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s action make their way through the courts.

“Do they view this as an efficiency kind of administration-focused action or do they view this ultimately as a policy disagreement?” said Philip Joyce, who studies the issue as a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland.

“It’s OK for a president to say ’there are more efficient ways for me to faithfully execute the laws.’ But it’s not OK for a president to say ’I’m not going to execute this law because I don’t agree with it,’” he explained.

Mr. Trump lost the first legal skirmish Tuesday when a federal district judge in Washington issued a temporary restraining order blocking the plans while early legal wrangling plays out.

In a memo Monday, Mr. Trump’s acting budget chief ordered a “temporary pause” on some federal assistance and grant spending. He gave agency chiefs until Feb. 10 to report back on what they’ve paused and what they’ve allowed to continue.

He said Mr. Trump, believing he earned a mandate from voters about the direction of federal spending, wants to align the government’s budget with his priorities.

“This temporary pause will provide the administration time to review agency programs and determine the best uses of the funding for those programs consistent with the law and the president’s priorities,” Matthew J. Vaeth wrote in the memo.

Democrats on Capitol Hill were merciless in their criticism. They called the pause “illegal” and “unconstitutional” and “dictatorial.”

“This is a constitutional crisis,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, told her supporters.

Part of the problem is confusion over the scope of Mr. Trump’s order. Critics said they believed it could shut down Medicaid payments. But guidance provided by the White House to Congress said that’s not the case.

When Mr. Biden halted wall spending, it was Republicans who objected.

They asked the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative branch, to weigh in with a legal opinion.

GAO said Mr. Biden was on solid ground because his pause was programmatic in nature, not a policy difference. But GAO said at some point Mr. Biden would have to spend the money.

Mr. Biden then spent years slow-walking the wall money, allowing materials to rust and directing spending toward environmental cleanup rather than barrier construction.

In 2023, though, Homeland Security did finally say it would use money to erect Trump-style border fencing. Mr. Biden said he was bound by the law.

“I can’t stop that,” Mr. Biden said at the time.

A federal judge last year also stepped in and ruled Mr. Biden couldn’t spend the money on environmental remediation and other projects only tangentially related to the wall that Congress authorized.

Mr. Joyce said comparisons between Mr. Trump’s action now and Mr. Biden’s border wall pause turn on the reasons given.

“The thing that makes this a little bit different is that the administration yesterday seemed to suggest it was about policy,” the professor said.

Mr. Trump also did a spending pause in his first term, halting $214 million in security assistance in 2019 that Congress had approved to go to Ukraine.

GAO ruled the Ukraine pause illegal because he was substituting his own “policy priorities” in lieu of Congress’s decisions.

House Democrats would impeach Mr. Trump over the pause and related claims of soliciting Ukrainian help in investigating Mr. Biden, though the GOP-led Senate subsequently acquitted him.