A potential showdown is brewing between President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans over federal spending, and tensions could boil over ahead of next month's funding deadline.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the Republican-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee is now making moves to prevent the Trump administration from freezing the disbursement of federal money that Congress includes in spending bills. Committee chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that in the past, agency heads from both Democratic and Republican administrations have adhered to the committee's guidance on how money should be spent, prior to Trump's second term.
"[I]n 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," she said.
READ MORE: Aides sat 'helpless' as 'incoherent' Trump displayed 'stunning ignorance': biographer
Traditionally, technical guidance on spending federal funds was written into non-binding legislative reports. However, senators are mulling putting that guidance into official spending bills. The Times reported that funding legislation for the Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice now includes detailed tables that had not been included in prior appropriations bills. Additionally, the bills now include detailed instructions on how grant rewards and contract terminations should be reported to Congress, as well as rules on any future mass layoffs in federal agencies.
"I believe members of Congress who know their districts and states should decide how taxpayer dollars get spent — not faceless political appointees, and not any president who wrongly believes they hold the power of the purse instead of Congress," Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told the Times.
As Murray noted, Congress' power over federal spending is explicitly spelled in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Murray also criticized a decision by White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to delete a federal website tracking the Trump administration's disbursement of Congressionally approved funds. She argued it was proof that the administration was seeking to "secretly and illegally exert even more control over funding approved by Congress."
Senate Republicans have previously come out against Vought and the Trump administration's withholding of Congressionally appropriated money for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 14 Republicans who mostly represent deep-red states sent the administration a letter last month urging the OMB to not interfere with billions of dollars dedicated to scientific research, including into cures for deadly diseases.
READ MORE: Trump 'in a tailspin': Answers demanded about 'remarkably close relationship' with Epstein
Click here to read the Times' full report (subscription required).