The Government Accountability Office, an independent, non-partisan congressional watchdog agency, found that NIH violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 when it cancelled nearly 2,000 research grants in an effort to comply with several of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, including “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” (The Cancer Letter, Jan 24, 2025).
The Impoundment Control Act protects the congressional “power of the purse” and formalizes a process by which Congress considers and reviews executive branch withholdings of budget authority.
The ICA allows the president to withhold funds from obligation, but only under strictly limited circumstances, according to GAO. The ICA was enacted to ensure that legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president is faithfully executed.
“Congress appropriated amounts to NIH to carry out various research objectives for fiscal year 2025,” the Aug. 5 report states. “We conclude that HHS violated the ICA when it withheld funds from obligation and expenditure.”
The GAO report states:
NIH’s actions to carry out these executive directives, coupled with publicly available data showing a decline in NIH’s obligations and expenditures, establishes that NIH intended to withhold budget authority from obligation and expenditure without regard to the process provided for by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA).
Unless Congress has enacted a law providing otherwise, executive branch officials must take care to ensure that they prudently obligate appropriations during their period of availability. The ICA allows the President to withhold funds from obligation, but only under strictly limited circumstances and only in a manner consistent with that Act. The ICA was enacted to ensure that legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President is faithfully executed.
The finding comes after a U.S. District Judge William Young for the District of Massachusetts June 16 ruled that the cancellation of the grants was “illegal,” striking it down (The Cancer Letter, June 20, 2025).
“GAO is aware of ongoing litigation involving the termination of NIH grants in which HHS has taken the position that it was authorized to terminate the grants,” the GAO report states. “GAO will continue to monitor this and any other litigation related to the delay in the obligation and disbursement of NIH funds. If a court makes relevant findings of fact relating to NIH funds, we will update this decision as necessary.”
