Who Holds the Purse

To the People of the United States:

1. The pain point today

The Constitution gives one branch the money. Today two failures meet over it.

The first is executive. In 2025 the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s auditor, found that the executive branch had violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 in decisions involving electric vehicle charger grants, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Head Start, the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It reached mixed results in two other decisions and found no violation in four.¹ On August 28, 2025, the President proposed nearly $5 billion in foreign aid rescissions timed so that the money would expire before Congress’s 45-day review period ran out, a tactic known as a pocket rescission. GAO has called the tactic illegal; the Office of Management and Budget says the Act allows it.² On September 26, 2025, the Supreme Court, 6 to 3, stayed a lower-court order requiring the funds to be spent, while stating that this was not a final ruling on the merits.³ On September 25, 2026, the White House reported 11 more rescissions totaling $810 million, which it described as another pocket rescission.⁴

The second failure is legislative. Congress has enacted all of its regular appropriations bills on time in only four fiscal years since the modern budget calendar began in 1977.⁵ The lapse that began October 1, 2025 lasted until November 12, the longest government shutdown on record.⁶ Homeland Security funding lapsed again on February 14, 2026, and the last parts of the department were not funded until June 10.⁶ A Congress that cannot pass a budget on time is poorly placed to defend its power over the money.

In No. 2, The Burthen We Ought to Bear, I set out what has become of the borrowing side of the purse: net interest on the debt now costs more than national defense, and a Senate subcommittee counted billions of dollars in back pay from just three of the period’s shutdowns. I will not repeat those figures here. This paper turns from what Congress borrows to whether the money it appropriates is spent as the law directs.

2. What they warned

The text is short. “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”✓ verified, Q1

James Madison explained in The Federalist No. 58 (1788) why the House would hold that power: “The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government.”✓ verified, Q2 And he gave it the highest praise in the papers, in the line I quoted in No. 2: “This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”✓ verified, Q3 In the same paper he foresaw the standoff. Would the House risk the government in a test of wills with the Senate? He asked, “if such a trial of firmness between the two branches were hazarded, would not the one be as likely first to yield as the other?”✓ verified, Q4 In No. 48 he gave the reason the purse belongs to the legislature: “the legislative department alone has access to the pockets of the people.”✓ verified, Q5

Alexander Hamilton agreed on the division. In No. 78: “The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.”✓ verified, Q6 In No. 26 he praised the two-year limit on military appropriations because Congress would be obliged “once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents.”✓ verified, Q7 The purse was meant to force a public decision. It is the same two-year rule I proposed in No. 3 for every authorization to use force.

George Mason pressed the separation at the Convention on June 6, 1787: “The purse & the sword ought never to get into the same hands whether Legislative or Executive.”✓ verified, Q8 Mason had already written the principle into Virginia’s Declaration of Rights in 1776: “That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights and ought not to be exercised.”✓ verified, Q9

The founders also argued about how open the books should be, and the record shows both sides. On September 14, 1787, Mason moved that accounts be published annually. Gouverneur Morris objected; Madison’s notes record: “Mr Govr. Morris urged that this wd be impossible in many cases.”✓ verified, Q11 Madison proposed the words “from time to time” instead, “which would enjoin the duty of frequent publications and leave enough to the discretion of the Legislature. Require too much and the difficulty will beget a habit of doing nothing.”✓ verified, Q10

Patrick Henry, at Virginia’s ratifying convention in June 1788, attacked exactly that compromise: “If those who are in Congress please to put that construction upon it, the words of the Constitution will be satisfied by publishing those accounts once in one hundred years.”✓ verified, Q12 He warned, “Unless a miracle in human affairs interposed, no nation ever retained its liberty after the loss of the sword and purse.”✓ verified, Q22 And he refused to rest the people’s money on character alone: “When deliberating on the relinquishment of the sword and purse, we have a right to some other reason than the possible virtue of our rulers.”✓ verified, Q13

The other side of the founding argument was the need for a strong executive. Hamilton wrote in No. 70: “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.”✓ verified, Q14 The Constitution gave the President energy. It did not give him the purse.

3. How it came true

Presidents have declined to spend money since the beginning, and how they did it matters. In his annual message of October 17, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson reported: “The sum of fifty thousand dollars appropriated by Congress for providing gun-boats, remains unexpended. The favorable and peaceful turn of affairs on the Mississippi rendered an immediate execution of that law unnecessary.”✓ verified, Q15 He told Congress openly, and he described a delay to build the boats well, not a refusal to follow the law.

In 1838 the Court rejected a broader claim. In Kendall v. United States: “To contend, that the obligation imposed on the president to see the laws faithfully executed, implies a power to forbid their execution, is a novel construction of the constitution, and entirely inadmissible.”✓ verified, Q16 In 1937 it described the Appropriations Clause as a restraint on the executive: “It means simply that no money can be paid out of the Treasury unless it has been appropriated by an act of Congress.”✓ verified, Q17 In 1990 it repeated: “Money may be paid out only through an appropriation made by law; in other words, the payment of money from the Treasury must be authorized by a statute.”✓ verified, Q18

The modern conflict began when the President in the early 1970s withheld large sums Congress had appropriated. Congress responded with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which requires the President to propose rescissions and lets Congress decide within 45 days. In Train v. City of New York (1975), the Court held without dissent that a water law required the full amounts to be allotted.⁷

Congress has also handed its power away. In 1996 a Republican Congress gave a Democratic President a line-item cancellation power. The Court struck it down in Clinton v. City of New York (1998): “There is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the President to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes.”✓ verified, Q19

The record since then runs through both parties. In 2014 GAO concluded that the Defense Department violated the Antideficiency Act when it spent funds on a prisoner exchange without the notice an appropriations law required.⁸ In 2016 a federal district court held that the executive had paid health insurance subsidies the statute authorized but Congress had not appropriated.⁹ Under the President of the other party, GAO found violations when the Energy and Homeland Security departments withheld funds in 2017 and 2018, and when OMB withheld about $214 million in security assistance to Ukraine in 2019.¹ In 2019 the President moved defense funds toward a border barrier that Congress had declined to fund, and in 2022 the next President’s administration announced the cancellation of student debt that Congress had never appropriated for. I traced both, and how each ended, in No. 4, A Ready Pretext. The point here is only that each moved money where Congress had not put it.¹⁰ And from 2025 the findings above.

The count is not even, and honesty requires saying so: GAO’s recent impoundment findings fall heavily on one administration. But the standard is the same for both, and both parties’ Presidents have moved money where Congress had not put it.

4. The choke point

The courts gave the country a framework long ago. A concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952) put it this way: “When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb.”✓ verified, Q20 The framework works only if Congress expresses its will and defends it. That is the choke point.

Congress does not finish its own work. Late budgets, stopgap resolutions and thousand-page omnibus bills move power to whoever controls the spending afterward. Madison’s own warning cuts against his successors: “Require too much and the difficulty will beget a habit of doing nothing.”✓ verified, Q10 Congress has made a habit of doing nothing until the deadline.

The calendar invites the pocket rescission. A 45-day review period that can outlast the fiscal year lets a President propose cancelling money in late summer and let it expire.

Enforcement is narrow and slow. The Act lets the Comptroller General sue, but courts have limited who else can, and the money often expires before a case ends.²

Partisanship replaces institutional loyalty. Madison expected each branch to defend its powers. Members of Congress now defend their own party’s President when he takes the purse and attack the other party’s President for the same act. In No. 4 I described where that leads, in my own words from No-America: to rules that survive after people stop believing they were honestly earned. When members stop guarding their own branch, what remains is the danger Madison named in The Federalist No. 47, which I also quoted in No. 4: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”✓ verified, Q21

5. The fix and the prevention

End the shutdown as a weapon. Provide an automatic continuing resolution at prior-year levels when appropriations lapse, perhaps with a declining level over time to keep pressure on. Trade-off: it removes urgency, rewards inaction and locks in last year’s priorities.

Close the pocket. Require that funds proposed for rescission in the final weeks of a fiscal year remain available until Congress has had its full 45 days. Trade-off: it narrows a President’s ability to stop spending he believes is wasteful, though the Act’s ordinary rescission path remains.

Speed enforcement. Give GAO suits expedited review and preserve the funds while a case is pending. Trade-off: more budget disputes in court, and judges drawn further into political fights.

Publish the books. Henry feared accounts published once in a century. Congress has required OMB to post its apportionment decisions publicly; that duty should be permanent, timely and enforceable.¹¹ Trade-off: some national security spending needs a classified annex, which should go to the intelligence and armed services committees.

Tighten the side doors. In No. 4 I proposed two reforms that also close the side door into the Treasury: make emergencies expire after 30 days unless Congress approves them, as bills of both parties have proposed, and bar the use of emergency declarations to move appropriated money between purposes.¹⁰ Trade-off: slower response in real emergencies, which No. 4 answers with guaranteed, expedited floor votes.

What a citizen can do. Read the rescission messages; they are public. Ask your representative and senators one question and insist on a yes or no: would you object if a President of the other party did this? Apply my Twelve-Word Standard: “if it would be wrong for them, it is wrong for us.”✓ verified, S1 And ask why your member voted for, or against, the last stopgap bill instead of a finished budget.

6. The strongest objection, and the answer

The strongest objection is that the President needs flexibility. Congress appropriates more than can be spent well, programs change, and the President must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, which can include not wasting money. Jefferson did not build his gunboats on schedule. OMB has argued that the Act allows end-of-year rescission proposals, and some argue the Act itself intrudes on executive power.

The answer is that flexibility already exists, by law. The Act gives the President a lawful way to propose cancelling spending, and Congress can approve it, as it did in July 2025 when it rescinded $9 billion of a $9.4 billion request, the first enacted rescission under the Act since 1992.² Congress can also write discretion into any appropriation. What the Constitution does not allow is a cancellation that Congress never votes on. Jefferson reported his delay openly and pursued the purpose of the law. A pocket rescission is designed to defeat the purpose by running out the clock. As Henry said, the people are entitled to “some other reason than the possible virtue of our rulers.”✓ verified, Q13

7. Questions for the Candlelight

1. Madison called the purse “the most complete and effectual weapon” of the people’s representatives. Is your representative using it, or handing it off?
2. Jefferson left money unspent and told Congress why. Where is the line between prudent delay and refusal?
3. If a shutdown is a “trial of firmness” between branches, who should yield, and who pays while they wait?
4. Should funds expire while a court decides whether withholding them was legal?
5. Name a President of your party who moved money around Congress. Did you object at the time?
6. Henry feared accounts published once in a century. Could you find out today how much of your state’s federal grant money is being withheld, and from whom?

Source notes

1. GAO, “Impoundment Control Act” decisions list (accessed 2026-09-29), https://www.gao.gov/legal/appropriations-law/impoundment-control-act ; GAO B-331564 (2020-01-16), https://www.gao.gov/products/b-331564 ; GAO B-329092 (2017-12-12), https://www.gao.gov/products/b-329092 ; GAO B-329739 (2018-12-19), https://www.gao.gov/products/b-329739 ; GAO B-337137 (2025-05-22), https://www.gao.gov/products/b-337137
2. Congressional Research Service, “Pocket Rescissions and the Impoundment Control Act: Background and History,” LSB11373 (2025-09-25), https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/LSB11373.html ; CRS LSB11374 (2025-09-25), https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/LSB11374.html ; GAO, “What is a ‘Pocket Rescission’ and is It Legal?” (2025-08-06), https://www.gao.gov/blog/what-pocket-rescission-and-it-legal ; GAO B-330330 (2018-12-10).
3. Supreme Court of the United States, Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, No. 25A269 (2025-09-26), https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a269_bp7c.pdf
4. The White House, letter to the Speaker reporting 11 rescissions (2026-09-25), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/September-Rescissions-Package-for-Speaker-Johnson_signed-9.25.26.pdf
5. Congressional Research Service, “Continuing Resolutions: Overview of Components and Practices,” R46595 (updated 2025-03-27), https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R46595.html : all appropriations were enacted on or before the start of the fiscal year only in FY1977, FY1989, FY1995 and FY1997, and FY1997 was the last fiscal year with no continuing resolution. Also CRS R41948 (2015-08-20), https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R41948.html
6. Congressional Research Service, “Past Government Shutdowns: Key Resources,” R41759 (2026-03-24); CRS, “Lapses in DHS Appropriations: History and Plans,” R49105 (2026-08-07), https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R49105.html
7. Legal Information Institute, Train v. City of New York, 420 U.S. 35 (1975), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/420/35
8. GAO, “Department of Defense: Compliance with Statutory Notification Requirement,” B-326013 (2014-08-21), https://www.gao.gov/products/b-326013 (violation of section 8111 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014, and of the Antideficiency Act).
9. United States House of Representatives v. Burwell, No. 14-cv-1967 (D.D.C. 2016-05-12) (memorandum opinion: Congress authorized the reduced cost-sharing payments but did not appropriate money for them), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_14-cv-01967/pdf/USCOURTS-dcd-1_14-cv-01967-1.pdf
10. Congressional Research Service, “Military Funding for Southwest Border Barriers,” R45937 (2019-09-27), https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R45937.html ; Legal Information Institute, Biden v. Nebraska, No. 22-506 (2023-06-30), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/22-506 ; ARTICLE ONE Act bills (2019, 2021, 2023), project brief 10 (2026-09-29).
11. Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Pub. L. 117-103, div. E, title II, sec. 204, 136 Stat. 256-257 (31 U.S.C. 1513 note): OMB must post each apportionment, with its footnotes, on a public website within two business days of approval, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-117publ103/html/PLAW-117publ103.htm

Notes marked S quote my own forthcoming book, No-America; line numbers refer to the Reading Edition v1.2 manuscript.

• S1. Shawn Cosner, No-America (forthcoming), Reading Edition v1.2, line 114: “if it would be wrong for them, it is wrong for us.”

Cross-references in this paper are to No. 2, The Burthen We Ought to Bear (net interest against defense spending, the cost of shutdowns, and Madison’s praise of the purse from The Federalist No. 58); No. 3, From Those Who Spend to Those Who Pay (two-year sunsets for authorizations to use force, in its Part 5); and No. 4, A Ready Pretext (the 2019 border emergency and the 2022 student debt cancellation in its Parts 1 and 3; The Federalist No. 47 and the No-America line on rules no longer believed honestly earned in its Parts 2 and 4; the 30-day emergency sunset and the bar on moving appropriated money in its Part 5).

Quotation verification

Every quotation from a founder, thinker, court or the Constitution was checked with the Founders engine quote check (engine/quotecheck.py, check(), with the OCR line-break fallback) against the cited passage, on the Spark, CPU only, on 2026-10-06, and re-run after the revision pass of the same day. Passage ids refer to ~/projects/founders.

| S1 | Shawn Cosner, No-America (forthcoming), Ch. I (the Twelve-Word Standard) | “if it would be wrong for them…” | manuscript line 114 | VERIFIED |

Result of the re-run: 27 of 27 quotation instances in the body passed (one, Q9, through the OCR line-break fallback), 0 failed. My own quotation (S1) was checked by the same function against the manuscript line cited. Note: “selfappointed” in Q21 is the corpus edition’s spelling (Avalon text); other editions print “self-appointed”.