Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) signed onto a letter with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray (WA) protesting a key decision by Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought about the continuing resolution passed to avert a government shutdown on March 14.
According to an emergency designation memo signed by President Donald Trump on March 24, the administration will only disburse some of the emergency funding from the CR," wrote Punchbowl News' Samantha Handler on X.
The top senators on the Senate Appropriations Committee told the OMB, "Just as the President does not have a line-item veto, he does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate."
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The letter said that Trump's memo "purports to have been executed in accordance with Section 1110 of H.R. 1968, the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025. Through the Memorandum, the President 'designate[d] as emergency requirements 16 appropriations,' but he did not concur with Congress’s emergency designations for 'the remaining 11 appropriations.' The President executed the Memorandum at your recommendation."
Business Insider's Brian Metzger pointed to the final paragraphs in the letter, which he characterized as the senators telling OMB: "You're not following the law, this screws up future government funding negotiations, communicate better."
"Regardless of our views on the Fiscal Responsibility Act and accompanying implementation agreement, it is incumbent on all of us to follow the law as written—not as we would like it to be. In this case, if the Administration disagreed with some of the designations that stem from the 'side deal,' it could have requested an anomaly prior to enactment of the continuing resolution, as it did in connection with numerous other issues," the letter says.
"Further, this new piecemeal approach calls into the question the availability of the emergency funding in the continuing resolution that the President has concurred with, including $8 billion in housing assistance. We are concerned that sudden changes to OMB’s interpretation of long-standing statutory provisions could be disruptive to the appropriations process and make it more difficult for the Appropriations Committee to work in a collaborative fashion with the Administration to advance priorities on behalf of the American people. Collaboration will become even more challenging when the Committee is first informed of such developments through the press, rather than notified through official channels, as was the case here," the senators closed.
