Appropriations bills aren’t glamorous. But they are the one chance Congress gets each year to evaluate and direct the executive branch, said Eloise Pasachoff, a law professor at Georgetown University. “That’s why appropriations laws are thousands of pages. It’s not just sums of money. It’s conditions, and set-asides, and carve-outs. If the president starts to say we are not bound by appropriations laws and Congress sort of blesses it, it’s another step toward an imperial executive which…the founders were pretty emphatic we shouldn’t have.” Legislative control of the purse can be traced to the Glorious Revolution in 17th-century England, when the king agreed to parliamentary supremacy on expenditure and taxation. The American framers enshrined that principle in the U.S. Constitution, which says, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” This is usually interpreted as requiring the president to spend what Congress appropriates.
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