Washington is staring down yet another government shutdown. The script is familiar: Appropriators spend recklessly, Congress blows past deadlines, and taxpayers are left footing the bill for dysfunction. But this time, there’s a difference. The Trump administration just reached for a long-dormant tool — the pocket rescission — and used it to cancel billions in foreign aid funding.

The reaction from Democrats was immediate outrage. They called it illegal, reckless, and dangerous. But here’s the truth: the pocket rescission has been in law for 50 years. Congress wrote it into the 1974 Budget Control Act as a way for presidents to challenge spending that never should have been enacted in the first place. For half a century, lawmakers have had the chance to clarify or close this so-called loophole. They haven’t.

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Why? Because keeping the loophole open has always suited their political purposes. Democrats, in particular, would rather attack the president for using the tool than admit they’ve failed to keep their own spending in check. Their real concern isn’t legality — it’s politics. They know that if the government shuts down, they are more likely to shoulder the blame.

Democrats are scrambling because the pocket rescission changes the game. For decades, appropriators assumed that bloated spending bills, once signed, were untouchable. That assumption is now gone. With the stroke of a pen, the president has shown there is another path: one that protects taxpayers by cutting waste at the source.

Make no mistake — this isn’t the first time a president has pushed the boundaries of executive power. Barack Obama did it repeatedly. From DACA to expansive foreign policy actions, he asserted bold executive authority in ways that critics said exceeded the law. Sometimes the courts sided with him, sometimes they did not — but the willingness to test unsettled legal ground defined his presidency.

President Donald Trump is doing the same now, but on an issue that goes to the heart of Washington’s dysfunction: spending. Democrats can keep calling the pocket rescission illegal, but the courts have never definitively ruled it out. Until they do, it remains a valid tool — and one with a clear purpose: forcing Congress to take its fiscal responsibilities seriously.

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If Democrats want to end shutdowns, they could start by producing responsible budgets and respecting taxpayers’ limits. Instead, they prefer to demagogue while the nation inches closer to another crisis. That political strategy might fire up their base, but it won’t change the reality that Americans are tired of blank checks and endless brinksmanship.

The bottom line is simple. The pocket rescission is lawful, it’s overdue, and it’s exactly what this moment demands. Congress has had fifty years to rein in its own excesses. It hasn’t. Now the president has stepped in — and Democrats can either adapt or continue to own the consequences of Washington’s broken spending culture.

Michael B. Williams is executive vice president of Tholos.