作者：大卫·M·德鲁克想象一下共和党人的愤怒：一位未来的民主党总统动用了原本用于加强以色列安全的资金，将其转移到另一个国家，用于另一项用途。
Imagine the uproar from Republicans: A future Democratic president takes a pot of money authorized to bolster Israel’s security and redirects the funds to another country, for another purpose.
特朗普总统最近就做了类似的事情：他动用了国会在四年前、在拜登总统任期内批准的5200万美元对外援助，作为乌克兰战争补充方案的一部分。他无视国会山的明确指令，且一贯持反基辅立场，特朗普计划将这笔钱用于他认定更重要的国家安全优先事项——即中美洲和南美洲的伙伴国哥伦比亚、厄瓜多尔、巴拿马和秘鲁。
President Donald Trump did the equivalent recently with $52 million of foreign aid, which Congress had appropriated four years ago, under President Joe Biden, as part of a supplemental package for the Ukraine war. Flouting Capitol Hill’s clear directive and consistent with his hostility to Kyiv, Trump instead plans to spend the money on national security priorities he deems more important — in Central and South American partner countries Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Peru.
新罕布什尔州参议员珍妮·沙希恩，参议院外交关系委员会首席民主党人；以及纽约州众议员格雷戈里·W·梅克斯，众议院外交事务委员会首席民主党人，正在强烈抗议。但他们试图维护国会支出权的努力缺少一个关键因素：共和党人。众议院和参议院中摇摆不定的共和党多数派正袖手旁观。
New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and New York Representative Gregory W. Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, are protesting aggressively. But their effort to preserve congressional spending authority is missing a key ingredient: Republicans. Teetering GOP majorities in the House and Senate are standing idly by.
快进到不远的未来，或许是特朗普直接继任者的政府。那位总统可能是民主党人，尤其是如果第45任和第47任总统（注：特朗普为第45任，若连任则为第47任）永远无法摆脱他自己制造的就业批准评级低谷。考虑到民主党对以色列的日益反感，这样的总统重新编程先前批准的用于耶路撒冷的军事及其他援助并非不可能。作为预计在今年年底前通过国会的1.2万亿美元国防授权法案的一部分，以色列援助中尚未使用的7.5亿美元可能成为诱人的目标。
Fast forward to the not-so-distant-future, perhaps the administration of Trump’s immediate successor. That president could be a Democrat, especially if number 45 and 47 never digs out of the job-approval-ratings hole he’s dug for himself. Considering the Democratic Party’s growing antipathy to Israel, it’s not out of the question that such a president might reprogram previously approved military and other assistance for Jerusalem. Whatever’s left unspent from $750 million in aid to Israel included as part of a $1.2 trillion defense authorization bill expected to clear Congress by year’s end might be a juicy target.
国会共和党人无疑会就权力分离和财政权大吼大叫。当然，如果下一任总统是共和党人，白宫将有充分的先例再次对民主党人做 exatamente 特朗普所做的那样的事情。
Congressional Republicans would no doubt howl about separation of powers and the power of the purse. Of course, if the next president is a Republican, the White House will have ample precedent to do to Democrats yet again exactly what Trump has done.
但让我们先放下我的假设，转而处理更紧迫的后果：特朗普政府与众议院民主党多数（以及可能的参议院）之间的预算谈判必将因深刻的不信任而陷入动荡，而这一局面预计将在约三周后的中期选举中出现。国会民主党无疑将试图制衡自2025年就职日以来一直在不断扩张行政权力边界的白宫。鉴于历届总统无论属于哪个党派都积累了巨大的权力，通过支出立法来约束特朗普对他们而言是最佳选择。
But let’s set aside my hypothetical for now and deal with more pressing ramifications: the intense distrust sure to roil budget negotiations between the Trump administration and a Democratic majority in the House (and possibly the Senate) projected to emerge from midterm elections now roughly three weeks out. Congressional Democrats will no doubt seek to check a White House that hasn’t stopped stretching the bounds of executive authority since Inauguration Day 2025. Given the immense power accumulated by presidents of both parties over the years, attempting to rein Trump in via spending legislation is their best option.
但如果总统已经对立法机构的支出特权表现出完全的无视，这种做法究竟该如何运作？
How is that supposed to work, exactly, if the president has already established a complete disregard for legislative branch spending prerogatives?
特朗普在其第一个任期期间，曾因将资金从一个联邦账户转移到另一个账户以资助美墨边境的安全屏障而习惯于凌驾于国会的“财政权”之上——而该项目恰恰是国会明确拒绝批准的。一些共和党人对此大发雷霆；北卡罗来纳州参议员汤姆·蒂利斯甚至在《华盛顿邮报》上发表社论，表达对这种立法机构被羞辱的不满。（蒂利斯后来又反复无常。）
Trump, during his first term, got comfortable with overriding Congress’ power of the purse when he moved money from one federal account to another to finance a security barrier along the US-Mexico border that Congress expressly refused to greenlight. Some Republicans got big mad; Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina even published an op-ed in the Washington Post voicing displeasure with this legislative branch humiliation. (Tillis later flip-flopped.)
但至少当时特朗普使用了五角大楼的资金，并声称存在紧迫的国家必要性——这实际上确实与国防部的总体使命相关。这一次，特朗普对国会权威的无视又迈进了一步。他不仅转移，还重新用途了原本专门用于援助欧洲盟国斯洛伐克和北马其顿、并明确用于缓解俄罗斯无端入侵乌克兰所造成后果的外援款项——而这与在西半球打击贩毒恐怖主义毫无关系，尽管后者本身或许值得称赞。
But at least Trump used Pentagon funds, claiming an urgent national imperative that did, in fact, relate to the Defense Department’s general mission. This time around, Trump has taken disregard for congressional authority a step further. He is both diverting and repurposing the tranche of foreign aid specifically intended for European allies Slovakia and North Macedonia — and explicitly for the purpose of mitigating fallout from Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine — which has absolutely nothing to do with fighting narcoterrorism in the Western Hemisphere, however laudable that is.
如果特朗普愿意反复践踏国会，民主党人在拨款法案中插入的任何旨在限制其政府的立法语言都可能变得毫无实际意义。而这种动态可能笼罩在白宫与国会山民主党领导人之间的预算谈判之上，导致更具破坏性的政府停摆；或是妥协的预算编制未能解决紧迫的财政、社会和国家安全挑战；或两者兼而有之。
If Trump’s willing to trample on Congress like that repeatedly, any legislative language Democrats insert in appropriations bills to hamstring his administration could be rendered practically meaningless. And that’s a dynamic that could loom over budget talks between the White House and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, yielding more damaging government shutdowns; compromise budgeting that fails to address urgent fiscal, social and national security challenges; or both.
公平地说，特朗普并非第一位测试国会对政府支出管辖权边界的总统。在20世纪70年代，理查德·尼克松总统仅仅是拒绝花费国会拨款的资金，理由是他有宪法义务高效管理纳税人的钱。几年前，拜登可疑地援引紧急权力来证明用国会未为此目的授权的现有资金来免除学生贷款债务的合理性——至少部分原因是国会山缺乏足够的支持。（同意该政策的民主党人欢呼拜登政府的做法。）事实上，国会有时确实会给总统一些操作空间，无论是有意还是无意的。
To be fair, Trump is not the first president to test the boundaries of congressional jurisdiction over government spending. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon simply refused to spend money appropriated by Congress, arguing he had a constitutional duty to manage taxpayer dollars efficiently. A few years ago, Biden dubiously invoked emergency powers to justify the forgiveness of student-loan debt with existing funds that Congress had not authorized for that purpose — at least partly because there was insufficient support on Capitol Hill. (Democrats, who agreed with the policy, cheered the Biden administration.) And Congress does, in fact, sometimes give presidents wiggle room, whether intentionally or not.
特朗普正在为中美洲和南美洲国家的替代用途重新编制的5200万美元外援中，包括一些用于伊拉克和突尼斯的资金，这些资金并不携带与斯洛伐克和北马其顿所保留资金相同的支出强制要求。沙希恩和米克斯仍在要求国务院暂停这些更改，理由是伊朗战争带来的紧迫需求。但特朗普政府似乎对原本用于伊拉克和突尼斯的资金部署具有一定的灵活性。
The $52 million in foreign aid Trump is reprogramming for alternative purposes in Central and South American nations includes some money for Iraq and Tunisia that does not carry the same mandates on spending as the funds reserved for Slovakia and North Macedonia. Shaheen and Meeks are still demanding the State Department halt the changes, citing imminent needs caused by the Iran war. But the Trump administration appears to possess some flexibility on the deployment of funds originally earmarked for Iraq and Tunisia.
然而，关键在于，国会——作为建国者们设想中最具影响力的政府分支——如今比之前更弱了一层，尤其是在涉及美国关键外交政策事务时。正如肯塔基州参议员米奇·麦康奈尔多年前在批评民主党削弱阻挠议事时所说的一句话：共和党人可能会为他们在这一发展中所扮演的角色感到懊悔，“而且[他们]可能比[他们]想象的更早就后悔。”
The bottom line, nonetheless, is that Congress, the branch of government the Founders intended as the most influential, is another degree weaker than it had already become, particularly on crucial matters of American foreign policy. To borrow a line Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell used some years back while criticizing Democrats for undercutting the filibuster: Republicans may rue the part they played in this development, “and [they] may regret it a lot sooner than [they] think.”