Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) defended the constitutionality of President Donald Trump cutting funding appropriated by Congress.
The Department of Government Efficiency has identified government contracts, leases, and grants deemed to be wasteful spending and then cut them, sparking legal battles. According to the department, this has already saved $55 billion. Additionally, Trump has paused federal grants via an executive order. Curtis appeared on CBS News’s Face the Nation to suggest that the legal process outlined by the Constitution is “proving to work.”
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“What we’re seeing play out is the wrestle between the three branches of government. We’ll find out. This is the beauty of the system,” Curtis said of the canceled funds.
“You don’t have a point of view?” CBS host Margaret Brennan asked.
“Well, listen, I believe in the Constitution, right? I believe this is how we test the Constitution. People have said, ‘Oh, this is a constitutional crisis,’ and I say exactly the opposite. It’s proving to work. We have the courts playing it. We have Congress who will play in it,” Curtis said. “Both parties — when Congress doesn’t do their job and the White House — have a tendency to try to solve it. Let’s let this play out by the Constitution, and then Congress, let’s step up, right? I’ll be the first to say this is a problem that Congress, in many cases, has given the American people.”
Among the dozens of lawsuits, one of the successes from Trump’s opponents was their litigation against the executive order ending birthright citizenship. At the moment there is a temporary restraining order keeping the Trump administration from moving forward to enforce it.
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While a lawsuit attempting to keep DOGE out of the data from the Labor Department was dismissed, and another attempt from 13 Democratic attorney generals was similarly thrown out, one U.S. district judge ruled against the department accessing the U.S. Treasury.
Curtis is in his first term as senator after serving in the House of Representatives since 2017, when he won a special election to fill Utah’s third congressional seat.
