In addition, Republicans say, Biden should know more after more than 30 years as a senator, as Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, said.
“He was in Congress for a long time,” Blunt said in an interview. “He knows that it is the job of Congress to authorize the way the money is spent and the president it is the job of the president to spend it efficiently.”
Even if the GAO decides that Biden has illegally suspended funding for the border wall, he is unlikely to face any formal punishment, especially the negative reaction and impeachment that Trump suffered after the former president suspended aid to Ukraine without Congressional authorization. The White House also notes that Biden’s control differs in several important ways from Trump’s move to block foreign assistance, which the GAO deemed illegal last year.
Biden’s proclamation in January “set this process in motion in a public and transparent manner, while guiding agencies to comply with the appropriation law,” said an OMB spokesman.
The investigation highlights the challenge that presidents have historically faced in fulfilling campaign promises that require money to be spent – or suspended – in disagreement with Congress’ intention. During his administration, Trump embezzled money from bills for things like military construction projects to pay the border barrier as he struggled to get Democratic congressmen to agree on the levels of funding needed to build the “great and beautiful wall” he promised his supporters . Now Biden is having trouble trying to turn off the financing tap after saying last year that “not a foot of the wall” would be built during his administration.
“The Biden administration has to be very careful when doing things like this, because otherwise they will do exactly what the Trump administration did – just on the other end of the policy spectrum,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a group manager. Project on Government Oversight surveillance system.
In defense of Biden, government officials make two main arguments.
First, they say the suspension of funding for the border wall was necessary to buy the government time to work out a plan to spend the money. An OMB spokesman called this “a necessary and responsible step towards prudent management of federal funds”, considering the bevy of lawsuits underway against the Trump project.
White House officials add that the funding gap was formal and public, with plenty of time left to legally spend that money and clear instructions that federal agencies must follow the spending law. In contrast, they note, Trump secretly tried to confiscate funds such as aid to Ukraine in 2019 and permanently tie up government money by acting before the annual spending deadline.
Senate Republicans who asked GAO to give their opinion on Biden’s funding movement said that “billions of dollars legally appropriated … remain unused by the Biden government”, which amounts to a violation of a 1974 law that restricts a president’s power to change the funding that Congress provides.
“Many of us agree that the border wall was a very stupid idea – a waste of money – but Congress decided to waste money on it,” said Hedtler-Gaudette. “The way to resolve this is not to have the executive branch replace the legislative branch.
Legality aside, Congressional leaders say Trump and Biden’s funding actions illustrate the need for more transparency and strength in federal budget law.
Under the leadership of progressive Democrat John Yarmuth, the House Budget Committee “is determined to reaffirm and strengthen Congressional power” and “will review GAO’s response to the senator’s inquiry,” said a committee spokesman.
The Kentucky congressman also plans to reintroduce legislation that “would increase transparency around executive spending,” said the aide. It is not clear whether the Biden government will support the project, which would require OMB to make public its instructions for spending money, clarifying the government’s financing decisions in a change that some advocates believe is necessary, regardless of who the president is.
Although the Government Accountability Office determined that Trump’s budget office violated the law by freezing U.S. military aid to Ukraine, the former president faced no penalty and was acquitted on charges of impeachment for abusing his power, withholding foreign aid.
“Faithful enforcement of the law does not allow the president to replace his own political priorities with those that Congress enacted in law,” wrote the GAO at the beginning of last year.
The Trump administration’s decision to prevent hundreds of billions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine took place behind closed doors until POLITICO broke the news in August 2019. The OMB used what is known as an apportionment footnote to insure that money , which was released just a few weeks before its expiration date.
Trump’s OMB attributed this to a “programmatic delay”, an often legitimate reason for breaks that the Government Accountability Office vehemently suppressed, citing the president’s politics and political ambitions, while Congressional Democrats accused Trump of leveraging funds to undermine the Biden’s image in the future of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s budget office also used the same tactics to enact a number of other political goals, including suspending funding for the World Health Organization amid accusations that it hampered the global response to the coronavirus pandemic and gave too much deference. the China.
Making a distinction between Trump’s actions and Biden’s action, a current OMB official told POLITICO that the White House budget office under the new president never used this allocation tool to freeze money for the construction of the border wall. . A bipartisan government financing package signed into law last year included $ 1.4 billion for the wall, in line with what Congress gave Trump in previous spending packages.
Biden’s pause – which his government also characterized as a “programmatic delay” – was announced publicly through the presidential proclamation. The government has also promised to release the money if the pause violates Congress’ intention.
The Biden government still plans to spend the funds on the border wall, and agencies can ultimately distribute the dollars for other purposes related to the walls permitted by law, such as repairs to fences.
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.