Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are asking questions about what Donald Trump's administration is doing with tax dollars that are being withheld or diverted from programs he doesn't like.
As part of the president's remaking of the government since he was sworn into office, he has taken it upon himself to not only cancel hundreds of billions in program funding promised by Congress, but also claw back dollars that had already been disbursed but not yet spent.
That has led both Democrats and Republicans to wonder where the money is going, because the White House and budget officials are not talking.
Case in point, as NOTUS reported: Alaska and Hawaii saw nearly $350 million designated for education efforts abruptly canceled.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) “just found out” in mid-September that the money is gone and now has questions about where it went, but is getting no answers from the Department of Education, which has indicated it will be “repurposed.”
“Billions in taxpayer dollars have become virtually untraceable — a level of opaqueness in government funds that’s raising questions around the legality of the administration’s actions. Some of these taxpayer funds expire on Sept. 30. If they’re not spent by then, like all funds Congress appropriated specifically for 2025, they disappear,” the report states.
According to the NOTUS rerport, the outlet, "Attempted to trace the money appropriated for more than 100 government programs to understand where taxpayer dollars are going, only to hit dead ends repeatedly. Data is outdated or conflicting, agencies have been vague in their explanations, and in many cases, there’s no publicly available evidence that appropriated money is being spent at all.”
Nan Swift, a budget transparency expert at the conservative R Street Institute, complained, “This information should be free, and it should be available, and it should be available in a format that we can use and understand,” before adding, “unless you have whistleblowers in place, the only way to know something has been cut is if the anticipated recipients step up and say, ‘We didn’t get XYZ.’”
One Hill staffer stated there was less concern about the money being spent before the allocation expires and more concern that it may be diverted to places Congress never intended.
You can read more here.