The Constitution is clear about many things. There are three branches of government. Presidents can only be elected to two terms. And Congress, not the executive branch, has the power of the purse, meaning the power to control federal spending. It is right there, as clear as day in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”
This is a bedrock principle of our government, which President Trump and his unchecked billionaire buddy are attempting to subvert. They are trying to do so through a variety of avenues, including using social media platforms to berate elected officials into submitting to their demands, impounding funds — which is nothing less than stealing congressionally appropriated dollars promised to Americans — and empowering the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
What all these tactics to get around Congress have in common is simple: They are undemocratic. I will not surrender the authority of Congress and the Appropriations Committee, where I serve as ranking member, to the tide of cronyism and unlawful decision making that threatens to unravel our constitutional form of government.
The warning signs were clear at the end of the 118th Congress late last year. I watched what should have been an uncontroversial bill to prevent a government shutdown, which included funding for disaster relief and a variety of bipartisan priorities, get derailed and come close to defeat when an unelected billionaire, Elon Musk, decided to intervene in the legislative process and browbeat Republicans into opposing their own leadership’s priorities.
The Appropriations Committees — Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate — negotiated the funding portions of this bill. In this committee, we carry out Congress’s power of the purse by providing the financial resources to programs and agencies that serve the American people.
It does not always go smoothly. I have long advocated for funding the government in an orderly and regular fashion by passing annual appropriations bills, a duty that has often been derailed by Republican dysfunction or demands for untenable spending cuts. At the end of the day, our work is about funding the basic services Americans rely on. It is a serious obligation, and it requires us to work together.
And we did. The process of governing, which requires give and take, produced a bipartisan package that would keep the government open. Our deal included $500 million in funding for child care, of which $250 million was provided to repair facilities damaged by disasters, and the authorization of $12.6 million in annual cancer research funding.
I must note the original bill also included foreign investment review requirements that would make sure American technologies and expertise are not being hijacked by foreign adversaries such as the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Musk’s Tesla has its largest vehicle factory in China, and he has taken multiple meetings with Chinese leaders as he seeks to expand his businesses there. Coincidence? I doubt it.
These bipartisan priorities would have passed overwhelmingly on the floor. But Mr. Musk happened to tune in that day, decided he disapproved, and posted about it on X over 100 times to his millions of followers, urging Republicans to kill the bill.
Republicans bent over backward to please their bankroller, passing a version of the bill that cut bipartisan priorities including the foreign investment review. Mr. Musk, who contributed over $288 million to the Trump campaign and other Republican candidates during the last election cycle, is clearly getting his money’s worth.
When he cannot achieve unilateral spending cuts by intimidating congressional Republicans with his billionaire allies, Mr. Trump also wants to use a process known as impoundment to steal funds intended to help American families and businesses. We have seen this scheme play out over the past two weeks.
Let me be clear that nowhere does the Constitution give the president unilateral power to impound funds appropriated by Congress. Not only would such a power be a direct challenge to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, but would run contrary to rulings from the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice and the Government Accountability Office. The Constitution gives Congress alone the power of the purse.
Yet Mr. Trump chose Russ Vought, an extremist who seems to believe the president is a king, to lead the Office of Management and Budget — the agency that manages the implementation of federal funds as appropriated by Congress.
Mr. Vought is an author of the Project 2025 manifesto, and he has a radical plan to dismantle Congress’s investments in our families’ health, safety and prosperity — utilizing, as he wrote in Project 2025, “aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.”
Mr. Vought plans to abuse spending laws by operating as if the president has unchecked, unilateral power to impound funds. He made this clear when he refused to commit to upholding the law with respect to impoundment in his Senate confirmation hearing.
Justice Antonin Scalia took aim at supposed presidential impoundment powers in Clinton v. City of New York, saying: “President Nixon, the Mahatma Gandhi of all impounders, asserted at a press conference in 1973 that his ‘constitutional right’ to impound appropriated funds was ‘absolutely clear.’ Mr. Scalia went on to note that two years later, in Train v. City of New York, the court proved Nixon wrong. Impoundment is a fanciful attempt to give the president the powers of a king, and it would be a disaster for our Republic.
Meanwhile, the Department of Government Efficiency is clearly another attempt by wealthy donors like Mr. Musk to artificially insert their policy preferences into the governing process. He is trying to disguise this self-serving crusade as a blue-ribbon commission, but it has no legal authority and aims to substitute the will of a rich few for the will of the people. This is par for the course for Republicans and their Project 2025 agenda, which seeks to erode the Constitution at every turn and give the president unilateral authority.
Amid the chaos of a Trump presidency, the Constitution must be our bedrock. Leaders of both parties have affirmed what every schoolchild learns: that Congress holds the power of the purse, and that bills to raise revenue must begin in the House. The executive branch is not empowered to decide these things, and the courts must uphold the plain text of our founding document.
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