Protesters rally outside the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on Feb. 5 to protest actions by the Department of Government Efficiency after it got access to federal employee data and locked out career civil servants from OPM computer systems. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Democratic leaders, fearing the federal government may try to withhold payments to the state, have introduced bills that would let Maryland treat the White House like any other deadbeat debtor – stop payments and call in a collection agency.
“We are in the era of a constitutional crisis, where the federal government is plainly acting illegally and defying court orders,” Del. David Moon (D-Montgomery) said Wednesday.
Moon introduced two emergency bills last week that he said will prepare the state to respond in the event that the Trump administration withholds funds from the state. He said that both give the Board of Public Works authority to determine whether the federal government is delinquent in its payments owed to Maryland and to take action if necessary.
The measures come as President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, the head of Trump’s U.S. DOGE Service, run roughshod over federal norms as they rush to downsize the federal government. Many of those efforts have been challenged in court.
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Among the actions taken in the six weeks since Trump took office are mass layoffs of federal workers, gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development and issuing a sweeping federal funding freeze.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday refused – for now – to block a lower court ruling that ordered the White House to continue making foreign aid payments while a case was pending from aid groups trying to overturn a Trump administration freeze on those payments. And a judge in Massachusetts ordered the administration to fully fund National Institutes of Health grants that the White House tried to cut.
“Essentially, we’re preparing for the possibility of the federal government acting as a deadbeat debtor and needing to find ways to collect congressionally approved funding,” Moon said Wednesday.
Moon said that the first of his two bills, HB1545, would authorize Comptroller Brooke Lierman, in consultation with the BPW, to withhold funds owed to the federal government in an amount equivalent to funds being withheld from Maryland.
The bill defines the federal government as being delinquent in the case of “noncompliance with court decisions” related to federal spending.
A spokesperson for the comptroller said the office was still reviewing the bills and was not able to immediately comment.
The second bill, HB1546, would direct Attorney General Anthony Brown to work with the Central Collections Unit to put liens on federal property in Maryland until the state is able to “resolve the payment obligations from the federal government.”
The bill states that Maryland would reserve jurisdiction with respect to any land that the federal government leases or holds in the state if they are found delinquent in their payments.
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Moon said that both measures are standard fare for debt collectors – and familiar to Trump and Musk, both of whom he said “have been subject to liens on their own company’s properties” as a result of business disputes.
Last March, New York Attorney General Letitia James placed liens on Trump properties during his civil fraud case in the state. Musk’s SpaceX and associated contractors were hit with scores of liens last year, as well, by multiple construction companies in Texas.
Moon is unconcerned at the prospect that the legislation may make Maryland a target of Trump and his administration – because he says that the state already is.
“Maryland is already in the crosshairs,” Moon said. “The federal government is asking us as a state to pay disproportionately for perceived national deficits, and they’re also putting multiple federal properties … up for sale.
“If they are attempting to profit off of illegal measures that can’t be easily undone … we have to defend ourselves,” Moon said.