Seizing the Power of the Purse: Striking the Core of the Republic
October 15, 2025
President Donald Trump’s usurpation of the congressional spending power, a seismic blow to the foundational power of the legislature and another in his endless string of constitutional violations, warranted, in the minds of the nation’s founders, an impeachable offense for its deadly assault on the republic and its chief weapon to control an arbitrary executive.
The power of the purse, James Madison observed in Federalist 58, represents 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.” The framers of the Constitution, in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7, granted this power to Congress: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” In homespun terms that captured the attention of Americans, Madison wrote in Federalist 48, “the legislative department alone has access to the pockets of the people.” How the United States spends its money, the founders declared, was an exclusively legislative, not executive, power.
President Trump, without challenge from the Republican-controlled Congress, has usurped the appropriations power in violation of this bedrock principle. He has unilaterally cancelled contracts, frozen billions of dollars in congressionally approved funding, and invoked the baseless claim of a “pocket recission” authority to withhold $5 billion in foreign aid. This authoritarian technique, depriving the representatives of the people from making decisions on the expenditure of tax dollars, was an object of towering concern to those who created and implemented the republic.
In 1793, during a congressional inquiry into the expenditure of funds by Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, then Rep. James Madison drew from the Federalist Papers and reminded colleagues of the essential security obtained through placement of the spending power in Congress. “Appropriations of money were of a high and sacred character; they were the great bulwark which our Constitution had carefully and jealously established against Executive usurpations.” A decade later, an acclaimed commentator, St. George Tucker, wrote in his introduction to Blackstone’s Commentaries: “All the expenses of government being paid by the people, it is the right of the people, not only, not to be taxed without their consent, or that of their representatives freely chosen, but to be actually consulted upon the disposal of money which they have brought into the treasury.” This, precisely, is why the Constitution grants to Congress the sole authority to withdraw money from the treasury.
If it were otherwise, Justice Joseph Story, the most scholarly of justices, warned in 1833 of the nightmare that “the executive would possess an unbounded power over the public purse of the nation; and might apply all its monied resources at his pleasure.” Story invoked Madison, noting the “salutary” check on “corrupt influence” if the executive controlled the purse. “In arbitrary governments the prince levies what money he pleases, disposes of it as he thinks proper, and is beyond responsibility or reproof.” It is for this reason, Story added, “that Congress is made the Guardian” of the treasury.
Trump’s baseless assertion of power to impound funds, freeze spending, and cancel programs, particularly those which he disparages as “Democrat programs,” reflects his seizure of “unbounded power over the public purse of the nation.” His theft of the spending power vitiates the right of the people, through their elected representatives, to be “consulted” on the “disposal” of their tax dollars. It bears reminder that the constitutional allocation of power to one branch bars its exercise by another.
The complicity of the GOP congressional majority in Trump’s seizure of the appropriations power is even more galling because the founders agreed that usurpation of the power of purse warranted impeachment. The English practice of impeachment was constantly before the eyes of the framers and influenced their drafting of the Impeachment Clause. Trump’s usurpation of the spending power reflects, precisely, the historic impeachment in 1680 of Sir Edward Seymour, Speaker of the House of Commons, for applying appropriated funds to public purposes other than those specified.
The framers’ deep-seated concerns about executive seizure of the appropriations power, heightened by English history, sharpened their resolve to preclude the president from laying claim to the spending authority. Today, however, the GOP acquiesces in the president’s exercise of a monarchical power that the framers of the Constitution rejected.
-David Adler