Top Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, alarmed by President’s Trump’s moves to withhold funding approved by Congress, have teamed up to add new safeguards to next year’s spending bills that would ensure the Trump administration allocates federal dollars as lawmakers intend.
The little-noticed moves are part of a quiet escalation in the battle between the legislative and executive branches over federal spending powers. Ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline for funding the government, the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee have said they must take extra steps to assert their authority over the allocation of government dollars, after the Trump administration has repeatedly questioned and defied congressional instructions on spending.
“In the past, the agency and department secretaries have always, or almost always, followed that guidance,” Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who leads the committee, said in an interview. “But in this administration, it is clear that we need to move far more of that language on how the money should be spent into the bills themselves.”
The changes may not survive negotiations with the House, where Republicans have been far more deferential to Mr. Trump. And they may not have a chance to be enacted, given the White House’s determination to have its way on spending. But proponents say that at the very least, the safeguards could strengthen the position of Congress in future legal battles over funding.
The guardrails are largely technical and include putting instructions into legislative text that would have previously been spelled out in nonbinding reports.
For example, officials say that detailed tables on spending for major agencies such as the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services are now being added to the text of the bills themselves, to try to assure that the funds are used for their specified purposes. The guardrails also include significant new requirements for reporting to Congress on terminating contracts and grant awards, as well as for making substantial reductions in the federal work force.
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The post Senate Adds Guardrails to Force Trump to Obey Spending Bills appeared first on New York Times.
