Trump’s spending freeze roils Capitol Hill
The Trump administration’s expansive freeze on federal grants and other executive spending roiled Washington on Tuesday, drawing howls from Democrats — and a few well-placed Republicans — who say the president is abusing his powers at the expense of public services.
It is also sparking confusion and fear among a broad group of stakeholders outside the Beltway — including schools, local governments and medical researchers — who rely on federal funds as a matter of course.
Amid the turmoil, Medicaid payment portals went dark in states across the country, sounding alarms over whether millions of patients in the program — including low-income children and nursing home residents — would lose access to care. Democrats quickly linked the portal outage to the executive spending freeze — a connection that was denied by administration officials, who said Medicaid spending was exempt from the budget suspension.
Still, the chaos is creating headaches for GOP leaders on Capitol Hill, who are scrambling to demonstrate their governing chops after winning control of Congress and the White House in November’s elections. Instead, they’ve spent a large part of Trump’s first week defending the president’s early executive actions and managing the internal GOP clashes that have erupted in their wake.
None of the orders, thus far, has proven as controversial as the federal spending freeze, which has the potential to delay — or in some cases threaten — trillions of dollars in funding for programs that affect every state and congressional district in the country.
Democrats maintain the freeze is illegal, since Congress........
© The Hill
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