Congress rejected Trump’s spending plans. Making sure its own budget is spent is the next challenge.

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Even this Republican-led Congress saw Donald Trump’s 2026 budget and said, No thanks.

The GOP’s wafer-thin majority in the House and the filibuster in the Senate give Democrats just enough leverage to ensure passage of budget bills that reflect both parties’ priorities. Which means that the spending documents assembled by White House budget director Russell Vought, which proposed draconian cuts across agencies, were largely ignored.

The 2026 budget bills signed by Trump last month included funding for critical energy efficiency and clean energy programs at levels that mirror or even exceed those in last year’s budget.

But for an administration that routinely ignores the law, two questions loom: Will agencies have enough staff to fulfill Congress’ will and implement programs and projects the president does not like, and will Vought allow agencies to spend money on those same initiatives?

Reprieve for energy efficiency and clean energy programs

The Trump administration tried to end the popular ENERGY STAR program last year. But in a bipartisan budget bill signed by Trump, Congress gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) $33 million to fund the program through the fiscal year ending on September 30.

The budget bill even “has the potential to strengthen the energy efficiency program by giving it dedicated funding,” NPR’s Jeff Brady reported last week.

The story was similar for programs that support wind and solar power and provide energy assistance to low-income households.

The budget bill Trump signed to fund the Department of Energy (DOE) provided $320 million for wind and solar – even though the White House’s budget request had zeroed out funding for the programs and the department had proposed a reorganization last year that would eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The Trump administration had similarly proposed eliminating the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) last year – at a time when energy affordability is top of mind and energy bills are soaring for households nationwide.

The spending bill signed by Trump gave LIHEAP more than $4 billion, $20 million more than the program had last year.

Who will be there to get the money out the door?

So, for key energy efficiency and clean energy programs, Congress took one look at Trump’s budget and tossed the binders in the recycling bin.

But there are facts on paper and facts in the real world.

In the real world, the Trump administration’s war on civil servants decreased federal agency payrolls by 220,000 employees between January and November 2025, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

It is “the largest one-year reduction in the federal workforce in over 75 years,” write Kiran Rachamallu and Devin O’Connor, researchers at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank, in a report published last month. “Federal civilian employment had fallen to the smallest share of the employed workforce on record in data going back to the 1930s.”

The Department of Energy alone lost more than 2,200 employees last year, according to OPM.

“This severe retrenchment in federal capacity – generally unaccompanied by any clear plan on how to maintain the programs and services these workers administer and Congress continues to support – has been radical in both size and speed,” write Rachamallu and O’Connor (emphasis added).

I share this concern.

Congress just told DOE to spend $320 million on wind and solar programs this year. But this week, the crown jewel of the department’s network of R&D labs, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (recently rebranded as the “National Laboratory of the Rockies”), fired 134 employees. This came after 114 researchers and scientists were fired at the lab in May of last year.

At the EPA, the ENERGY STAR program is likewise threatened by a dearth of employees to deliver the services Congress paid for.

“The Energy Star program is not fully out of the woods yet. It's one thing to keep the Energy Star program alive and fully funded, but what we really need is for the program to be fully staffed,” Jeremy Symons, a senior adviser at the Environmental Protection Network, told NPR’s Brady.

Will Russell Vought block the funding?

In a post listing the ways Donald Trump has failed to follow the Constitution’s direction that the chief executive “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” Dan Farber, professor and co-director of the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley School of Law, writes that Trump:

“Has openly violated laws appropriating funding for agency staff, such as layoffs at environmental agencies.”

“Has violated laws appropriating funding for specific programs like climate change research or research on the connections between health, race and gender, solely because he disagrees with those congressional decisions.

“Has arbitrarily denied funding to programs or jurisdictions for partisan reasons unconnected with the purposes of the funding, such as refusing to declare emergencies in severely damaged states due to quarrels with their governors or the simple fact that the state voted for his opponent.”

Donald Trump is not honoring his oath to faithfully execute the law, to be sure. But no one should pretend that Trump cares about the details of governing.

That’s the job of Russell Vought, “the shadow president.”

What happens when Vought, in response to a late-night Trump post on Truth Social or because of his own ideological fervor, simply refuses to spend the $33 million for ENERGY STAR or the $320 million for wind and solar R&D?

Just last week, Vought's office halted the release of $135 million to build EV charging stations in the blue states of California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota.

In the near term, Democratic state attorneys general must continue to challenge Vought and the administration’s disregard for budgets and the law.

And when the new House and Senate are seated in January 2027, should Democrats win back control of one or both chambers, Democratic-led committees must use subpoenas and the threat of impeachments to force the release of documents and correspondence, compel the testimony of Cabinet officials, and otherwise restrain Trump and officials like Vought who are acting in his name.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to determine how the federal government spends money. More than one year into Trump 2.0, it's clear White House officials believes that power is theirs alone.

It's long past time for Congress to reclaim its role as a co-equal branch of government and to restore its control of federal spending.