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.”
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I’m assuming that it’s a check against Congress just appropriating absurdly large sums for pet projects or for securing donations. The job of the executive is not to blindly follow Congress, but it’s also not to fight everything Congress wants.
The responsibilities of each branch, the checks and balances, are well defined on both sides. Going off script is almost by definition an abuse of power
It’s not off script. Not spending a billion dollars on Capitol landscaping even if Congress appropriated that much wouldn’t be faithfully executing the laws.