The White House has stopped posting any of its spending moves, which dodges a law passed during President Donald Trump's first term.
Writing for The Washington Post, law professor Samuel R. Bagenstos said the second Trump administration is dismissing the legislative powers outlined in federal law, giving Congress the power to decide how taxpayer dollars are spent.
"Without legal authority, they have refused to spend money Congress has appropriated, engaged in mass firings that have made it impossible to spend that money, and even eliminated entire agencies created and funded by Congress itself," the report said.
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Now, Trump's team will be hiding "apportionments," which defies transparency laws that were passed to expose similar abuses the first time around. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought made the announcement, and the website where that list would be disappeared.
During his first term, Congress allocated funds to Ukraine as part of the defense against a Russian invasion. Trump withheld those funds. Then, on a call with newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump promised he would send weapons, but “I would like you to do us a favor, though." Those 10 words led to Trump's first impeachment.
It prompted legislation in 2022 that required a kind of public database of distribution, showing how the spending was being allocated.
"Sources familiar with the decision" to kill the public database "said it was made because preliminary information was being disclosed on the site. They added that making apportionments public could include sensitive data that might pose a risk to national security," Roll Call previously reported.
Bagenstos said hiding apportionments "creates the perfect conditions for shakedowns and corruption." The Ukraine shakedown is the perfect example, he added.
"The irony? Congress created apportionments as a key means to protect its constitutional power of the purse," the law school professor said, detailing the history of the mandate.
"A version of that requirement remains in the statute books today — though the law now requires the president to make the apportionments, a task carried out by the Office of Management and Budget in the White House," he said.
However, that's the same office that deleted the website where that information was located.
