Nixon withholds $10 billion in congressional appropriations, including HEW funds, as a line-item veto substitute

After his 1972 landslide reelection, President Richard Nixon systematically impounded between $10 and $18 billion in congressionally appropriated funds — including HEW education, housing, and clean water grants — asserting executive authority to nullify spending he considered inflationary. Senator Hubert Humphrey publicly charged that the Nixon administration had frozen more than $10 billion "without informing the public or the Congress." Courts ruled against Nixon in dozens of cases, and the constitutional crisis over impoundment directly triggered Congress to draft what became the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.