Trump budget officials claim sweeping spending power from Congress, records show

The Trump administration is asserting new power to withhold billions of dollars from low-income housing services, education assistance, medical research grants and other programs approved by Congress, centralizing sweeping authority in the executive branch and potentially inflaming tensions between the two branches.

The new practices revealed Monday – which increase the leverage and power of budget chief Russell Vought – are likely to reignite a clash over the administration’s power to freeze dollars approved by Congress, usurping authority that the legislative branch has under the Constitution. The power struggle dates to President Donald Trump’s first term, when his refusal to release congressionally approved money for Ukraine helped spark a House impeachment, from which he was acquitted in the Senate.

Trump during his second term has been more emboldened to ignore Congress’s approved spending plans, and the two Republican-controlled chambers have largely acquiesced. But the issue has simmered in the courts, which recently determined the White House Office of Management and Budget must make its spending decisions public.

The agency’s newly released documents, made public under the court order, show Trump’s budget office is imposing litmus tests on releasing money – demanding plans from agencies to show they are following guidance Trump has laid out in executive actions, such as avoiding spending on diversity programs. While Trump has authority to issue those directives, experts say they do not, under law, carry the same weight as congressional actions.

The documents show OMB has in some cases blocked the release of funding until agencies provide a White House-approved spending plan, and in other cases prevented funds from being spent that conflict with Trump’s executive orders.

The restrictions effectively give Vought, the director of the White House budget office and an architect of the controversial conservative governing plan Project 2025, the power to approve or deny virtually all spending decisions. The records do not provide a full accounting of government funding that has been withheld.

The administration’s spending requirements are coming in the form of footnotes attached to “apportionments,” which are records that provide permission for agencies to spend federal money.

Federal budget offices under previous presidents have generally asked agencies to provide spending plans before doling out money, according to experts. But withholding that money constitutes an impoundment, which is illegal under the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, those experts said.

David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the restrictions turn OMB “from a one-time seller of land to your very intrusive landlord.”

Apportionment, he said, is designed as a one-time process for the White House to ensure agency spending decisions comply with spending laws. The Trump administration’s limitations fundamentally alter that relationship, making OMB a constant party in checking and rechecking to ensure spending adheres to the president’s priorities.

“That’s completely unlawful,” he said. “They don’t have the power to do that.”

An OMB representative declined to comment for this article and referred to statements from Vought and Mark Paoletta, OMB’s general counsel, that challenged government watchdogs’ determinations that the administration was improperly blocking spending.

“The president ran on the notion that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional. I agree with that,” Vought said in Senate testimony in January, referencing the law that prevents the president from unilaterally withholding funding.

OMB has been required by law since 2022 to post apportionments on a public website. Vought took that website down in March, arguing that it reveals “sensitive, predecisional, and deliberative information.”

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court determined that the administration must make the information public again. OMB had until Friday to put it back online.

By Friday, OMB had uploaded apportionments for the Justice Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs. More records were uploaded over the weekend and on Monday.

“It’s clear now why Vought and Trump have fought so hard to prevent this information from being public,” Sen. Patty Murray (Washington), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “They have used this process to secretly and illegally exert even more control over funding approved by Congress, freezing key investments from going out the door for agencies to conduct critical work and help the American people.”

Trump used the same strategy at least once during his first term: OMB temporarily withheld Pentagon and State Department funding for Ukraine in 2019 before a conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Project 2025 – the conservative playbook for Trump’s second term that the president disavowed on the campaign trail – also directly advocated that the OMB director use apportionments to shape spending to align with the president’s priorities.