Zachary Price, UC Law, San Francisco, has posted Effectuating Congress's Power of the Purse:
Congress’s power of the purse—its authority to control government spending—is one of its most important authorities. Yet its hold on the executive branch may be fraying, as recent presidents have applied appropriations statutes inventively and the current administration seems poised to assert still greater control over spending. In part because advocates have advanced tendentious historical claims to support such unilateral executive action, this Article explores the history of how Congress in the past has effectuated its constitutional power over government spending.--Dan Ernst
The Article explains that although Congress’s power of fiscal control has generally been quite potent across U.S. history, Congress’s grip on executive spending was in some ways weaker before the development of the modern administrative and national-security state. In the nineteenth century, although Congress exercised considerable informal influence over administration, executive officials frequently overran their appropriations, shifted money creatively between accounts, and spent money for purposes for which Congress did not clearly appropriate funds; in addition, they sometimes did the opposite and “impounded,” or declined to spend, funds that Congress did appropriate. Such actions, however, occurred in a markedly different practical, legal, and institutional context from contemporary administration.
This history has at least three important implications in the present. First, it undermines contemporary arguments for a unilateral executive prerogative based on nineteenth century spending practices. Second, the history sheds new light on the fraught debate over presidential administration and the unitary executive branch, suggesting that congressional control over spending is an essential complement to presidential control over the executive branch. Finally, the history may support greater contemporary application of mechanisms for holding individual officers liable for unlawful expenditures.
