Trump was accused of breaking a Nixon-era law by withholding funds to Ukraine. Now, he wants to get rid of it entirely.

• Trump pledged to restore a sweeping presidential power that Nixon abused to the point of it being curtailed.
• The former president wants to restore the ability for presidents to impound funds.

Former President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday to restore a sweeping presidential power to curb federal spending that Congress reined in after lawmakers believed then-President Richard Nixon abused the authority.

"I will fight to restore the president's historic impoundment power," Trump said at an event in New Hampshire. "A lot of you don't know what that is."

It's not just history that's at play either.

In the wake of Trump's first impeachment for withholding funds for Ukraine, the Government Accountability Office concluded that Trump had violated the Nixon-era law. The former president's response now is to just do away with the law entirely, potentially foreshadowing a repeat of the Constitutional crisis Congress and the Nixon White House engaged in.

"Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law," the GAO concluded.

Trump is correct that the issue of impoundment is a little wonky, but if he or another future president were to try to claw back such power it could easily lead to massive cuts in domestic programs.

Impoundment refers to when a president refuses to spend funds that Congress has provided for. It can be temporary, which is exactly what happened when Trump froze Ukraine funding for 55 days, or it can be permanent.

Trump pointed out that presidents dating back to Thomas Jefferson impounded funds. But scholars generally agree that Nixon relied on that history in an unprecedented way. He used the power far more often than his predecessors and he used it mainly to thwart domestic spending.

"I will not spend money if the Congress overspends, and I will not be for programs that will raise the taxes and put a bigger burden on the already overburdened American taxpayer," Nixon said at a July 1973 news conference where he declared an "absolutely clear" constitutional right to impound funds as he saw fit. (Congress and many legal scholars at the time did not agree with that broad assertion of presidential powers.)

In response to Nixon constantly thwarting their will, Congress passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which created the modern Congressional budget process, the Congressional Budget Office, and also created a process for presidents if they want to delay or cancel funding provided by Congress.

Nixon, who as Politico pointed out was swamped by Watergate, signed the bill into law even as he trolled congressional Democrats for passing it in the first place.