Modernizing the Power of the Purse Statutes

Abstract

Two foundational statutes limit the executive branch’s important and necessary work in executing the budget against the backdrop of congressional control: the Antideficiency Act, dating back to the post-Civil War era, and the Impoundment Control Act, which emerged from the Nixon years. This essay, written as an invited contribution to the G.W. Law Review’s annual volume on administrative law, calls these the Power of the Purse statutes. While these statutes have been generally successful in responding to the problems that originally prompted them, the essay illustrates gaps in the statutes that have become apparent in an era of expanded presidential control and proposes reforms to fix them. The reforms largely, although not entirely, map onto legislation proposed by Democrats in the 116th and 117th Congresses. The essay argues that that these proposals are common-sense reforms that ought to be supported by bipartisan majorities (as underscored by, among other things, their support from a remarkably bipartisan coalition of civil society organizations during both the Trump and Biden administrations and the enactment of several of the reforms with bipartisan support through consecutive Consolidated Appropriations Acts). The essay thus reframes both the problems and the proposals as institutional rather than partisan and urges that the reforms ought to remain on the agenda for the 118th Congress and beyond.

The final version of this paper is available at https://www.gwlr.org/modernizing-the-power-of-the-purse-statutes/.

Keywords: Power of the Purse, Antideficiency Act, Impoundment Control Act