The suit before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is the latest in a series of controversies over how the Trump administration is spending, or not, funds appropriated by Congress. Image: Phil Pasquini/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA federal judge has ordered OMB to restore a public disclosure of spending that the Trump administration discontinued under what the judge called “an extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power.”
The suit before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is the latest in a series of controversies over how the Trump administration is spending, or not, funds appropriated by Congress. The suit asserts that taking down “apportionment” information from https://apportionment-public.max.gov/ violated a requirement that has been in law since a 2022 budget measure.
“Defendants claim that their apportionment decisions—which are legally binding and result in the actual spending of public funds—cannot be publicly disclosed because they are not final decisions about how to administer the spending of public funds. However, the law is clear: Congress has sweeping authority to require public disclosure of how the Executive Branch is apportioning the funds appropriated by Congress,” District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan wrote in issuing an injunction that the administration likely will appeal.
Earlier, top Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees criticized OMB’s action, saying that apportionments “are final, decisional, and legally binding on agencies” and that “there have never been national security concerns associated with this statutory requirement.”
The GAO later took that same position in a letter to OMB, adding that it “has a number of on-going Impoundment Control Act inquiries and engagement work, many of which rely on apportionment data” and that it has a “broad statutory right” to that data.
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