The Trump administration broke the law when it withheld funding for the nation’s libraries, a nonpartisan government watchdog said on Monday, a finding that inches the White House another step closer to a legal showdown over its powers to reconfigure the country’s spending.
The decision by the Government Accountability Office was the second time in two months that oversight officials have found fault in the ways that President Trump and his top aides have tried to circumvent lawmakers in their quest to reshape the federal budget so that it conforms with their political views.
The inquiry concerned the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which serves as the federal government’s primary source of funding for libraries, museums and archives. In March, Mr. Trump sought to sharply curtail the agency as part of an executive order focused on the “reduction of the federal bureaucracy,” prompting legal challenges from states, librarians and other opponents.
The accountability office, an arm of Congress that keeps watch over the nation’s spending, concluded on Monday that the library agency ultimately “ceased performing” its functions after the president’s directive, and withheld funding that lawmakers had previously appropriated to carry out its mission.
Ethics officials ultimately classified the interruption in aid as an illegal impoundment, which is prohibited under a 1970s law meant to restrict the president and his ability to defy Congress on spending. The White House maintains that those limits are unconstitutional, and the president and his top budget aide, Russell T. Vought, have sought to test that theory as part of their dramatic and chaotic reorganization of the federal government.
Earlier this year, the accountability office revealed that it had opened more than three dozen investigations into Mr. Trump’s spending activities. It announced the first of those findings in late May, concluding that the administration violated the law when it withheld money under a $5 billion program to expand electric vehicle charging stations.
The White House fiercely denied the charges, arguing that it had appropriately used its authorities to review infrastructure spending. It said the watchdog’s views were “wrong and legally indefensible,” adding that it had temporarily delayed the money to “ensure alignment with President Trump’s agenda.”
Mark R. Paoletta, the general counsel for the White House budget office, later wrote in a May letter that the administration was in “full compliance” with the anti-impoundment law. He also faulted the accountability office for information requests and other actions that “undermine agency efforts to faithfully implement the law and the president’s priorities,” describing it as an “invasion by an arm of Congress.”
A spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the newest report.
The watchdog, led by the comptroller general, Gene L. Dodaro, said it based its findings on publicly available data, saying that the library agency did not respond to repeated requests for information. The accountability office can sue if the administration continues to refuse to release funds enacted by Congress. But Mr. Dodaro, whose term is set to expire in December, has not signaled whether the office would take that rare step.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats swiftly attacked the president for seeking to sidestep their authority to control the nation’s spending.
“President Trump may not like the fact that Congress has, on a bipartisan basis, invested in helping kids learn at their local library — but that does not change the fact that he himself signed these investments into law, and they need to start flowing immediately,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the chamber’s Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.
Separately, the accountability office found on Monday that the Trump administration had acted appropriately when the president moved to limit agencies from promoting wind energy development. The watchdog said Mr. Trump’s directive, issued shortly after he took office, did not affect federal funding authorized by Congress.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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