WASHINGTON (Georgia Recorder) — Two top Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to detail exactly how it’s spending money that Congress approved earlier this year for government operations.
House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray of Washington released a two-page letter Wednesday demanding the White House budget office share that information this week.
The detailed plans were due to Congress by April 29, but several departments and agencies haven’t submitted the information to lawmakers, or have sent up incomplete documents, they wrote.
“The widespread failure of departments and agencies to abide by the requirements of section 1113 is unacceptable, and the lack of transparency begs serious questions about what exactly this administration is seeking to hide from the Committees — and the American people,” DeLauro and Murray wrote to the budget director, Russ Vought.
“These spending plans are essential to understand how the executive branch is spending taxpayer dollars appropriated by Congress in fiscal year 2025, and they directly inform the legislative responsibilities of the Committees to consider fiscal year 2026 appropriations legislation, a process that is already underway,” the two lawmakers added.
Repeated requests for information
The lack of detailed information about how exactly the Trump administration is spending funding approved by Congress has come up during several Appropriations Committee hearings during the last month.
Concerns from lawmakers, however, have not led to a change in heart as of this week’s letter. The Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Congress was unable to broker agreement on the dozen annual spending bills for the current fiscal year, which began on Oct 1. Instead, lawmakers passed a series of stopgap spending bills that essentially held funding levels flat and kept the prior year’s policies mostly in place.
The third stopgap spending bill, which lawmakers passed in March, required the Trump administration to tell Congress how it planned to spend those resources. The requirement is intended to assist lawmakers with their oversight responsibility and to help them shape the next fiscal year’s dozen appropriations bills.
“As the House and Senate Appropriations Committees intend to mark up the fiscal year 2026 bills next month, we demand that by the end of this month you comply with section 1113 and ensure that all spending plans contain sufficient information to demonstrate how each department and agency intends to prudently obligate all amounts provided by Congress for fiscal year 2025 within their period of availability and resubmit them to the Committees,” DeLauro and Murray wrote.
Website pulled down
The Trump administration did publicly post budget documents earlier this year that detailed how quickly departments and agencies planned to spend the money appropriated by Congress, known as apportionments.
Vought had that website pulled down in late March, leading to lawsuits from government watchdog groups.
The judge in those cases heard arguments earlier this month, but has yet to issue a ruling about whether the Trump administration violated the law by removing that information.
