The director of the Office of Management and Budget is infuriating Republican lawmakers by “going rogue” on what appropriations were approved by the House and Senate.
MS NOW’s Hayes Brown wrote on Monday that Director Russell Vought has made a unilateral decision to control whether funds are actually sent out for projects that Congress approved.
The constitutional core is Article I’s Appropriations Clause: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” So, the president can’t legally spend Treasury money unless Congress has authorized it through law. Appropriations are technically laws approved by Congress. The president’s Article II powers mandate that he “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
But the executive branch is refusing to disburse the funds approved by law. In fact, Brown explained that “Vought has used every lever he can reach to stanch the flow of federal dollars.”
A series of reports last week cited a group of what they’re calling “zombie programs” across the U.S. government. Those are programs like the CDC’s Alzheimer’s disease program or programs around epilepsy and sickle cell disease data collection operations. There’s even a rape prevention unit. All of them have been approved and fully funded by Congress. When Elon Musk went through his DOGE cuts, the people who worked on the programs were let go.
Vought has encouraged the president to impound money that Congress has allocated, even if it’s against the law. In fact, Brown cited “a law specifically forbidding the practice.”
After the huge DOGS cuts, “OMB sent a list of rescissions,” saying that it would “undo” Musk’s moves to kill programs that Congress funded.
“Congressional Republicans signed off on a package cutting $8 billion in foreign aid funding and roughly $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But that wasn’t enough for Vought, who last fall enacted a ‘pocket rescission’ to cut another $4.9 billion in foreign aid,” Brown explained. “By only informing Congress of the hold less than 45 days before the end of the fiscal year, OMB argued, the money would be cut automatically.”
Then Vought deployed the “apportionment” process, stating that federal spending must align with Trump’s budget proposals. It’s the way that Trump’s government has been able to take tax dollars from blue states while refusing to allocate appropriated funds.
“Even more troubling, a new federal rule currently in the works would give his office unprecedented control over issuing federal grants. If enacted, the rule would effectively serve as a roundabout veto over spending that fails to ‘demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities,’ even those that meet the specific guidelines Congress has put in place,” the Brown wrote.
The tactics are angering lawmakers, including Republicans.
“Congress has appropriated money, and you don’t have the authority to impound it,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a Senate Budget Committee hearing with Vought.
Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), who is also a senior Republican on appropriations, told Politico, “Pocket rescissions would be a very interesting way to curry favor with the legislative branch — especially the one part of the legislative branch which has delivered on all of the administration’s s——.”
A short-term budget bill was passed by the Senate before they left for the August recess, and its language temporarily halts Vought’s takeover of federal grants. The House still must pass the bill, but the odds look good, as no one wants a government shutdown weeks before the election.
Brown pointed out that it’s one of the far too few occasions on which the legislature has asserted its authority in many years. In the past two years specifically, Congress has ceded its power over trade and war to the president. He said it’s nice to see lawmakers finally draw a line.