Patty Murray and Republican counterpart Susan Collins object to Trump withholding funds

WASHINGTON – The top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee joined her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, in accusing President Donald Trump on Thursday of illegally withholding funds approved by Congress.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Murray jointly sent a letter to Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, after Trump declared in a memorandum on Monday that he would cut nearly $3 billion in emergency spending included in a bipartisan deal struck in 2023 known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

“Regardless of our views on the Fiscal Responsibility Act and accompanying implementation agreement,” Collins and Murray wrote, “it is incumbent on all of us to follow the law as written – not as we would like it to be.”

The letter represents a rare rebuke by a congressional Republican of Trump’s ongoing effort to assert control over federal spending, which is reserved for Congress under Article I of the U.S. Constitution. If that authority is undermined, it casts doubt on the annual appropriations process through which Murray and Collins, along with their counterparts in the House, craft bipartisan bills to fund the government.

In his memo to Congress, Trump indicated that he would spend only part of the $12.4 billion designated as emergency spending in the 2023 bill, because he didn’t agree that all of it was in fact needed on an emergency basis. The funding withheld by Trump would go largely to causes his administration already has opposed, such as international disaster assistance and aid to refugees, but also includes money to control the international narcotics trade and for the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Collins and Murray asserted that federal law makes clear that a president may spend all or none of such funding, but “he does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate.”

While the letter’s tone was relatively restrained, Murray took to the Senate floor on Thursday to voice her frustration with the administration usurping one of the primary powers of Congress.

“Right now, we have a couple of billionaires running our country straight into the ground who seem to have skipped American history, because President Trump and Elon Musk don’t seem to care much about our Constitution,” the Washington Democrat said, referring to the billionaire adviser the president has empowered to carry out his agenda.

When they announced their plans on Monday, Trump and Vought asserted that a president can withhold funds approved by Congress and the law cited by Collins and Murray is unconstitutional. That claim is likely to be tested in court.

“The basic fact that Congress has the power of the purse is something Republicans and Democrats agree on,” Murray said on the floor. “And it won’t change no matter what Trump or Russ Vought or Elon Musk claim. Their legal theories are plain outlandish, and so are their facts.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, sent her own letter to Vought on Thursday. But that panel’s chair, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, didn’t sign DeLauro’s letter, suggesting that House Republicans are less willing to assert their authority than Collins and her Senate colleagues.