Sen. Susan Collins (R Maine), the head of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, and her Democratic counterpart, are challenging the Trump administration to handle emergency funds included in the law passed earlier this month.
in letter President Trump's budget premier Russell Vert, Collins and Sen. Patty Murray (Washington), the top Democrats on the Funding Committee, will make an effort to withhold funds from emergency designations approved by Congress.
Negotiators have cited a recent message from the administration, saying that they only agree with some of the emergency designations for Congress' fundraising, but not all.
In a letter, Collins and Murray said the president “has no ability to choose which emergency spending to specify.” They also point to provisions from the recent funding bill. They have been interpreted as “explicitly embracing” language that has been used in spending laws for decades and as giving the president a binary choice.
“He does not have the ability to choose which emergency spending to specify so that the President does not have the right to veto the item. This interpretation is consistent with Congress' intentions and is the most logical and consistent reading of the law,” they write.
Oka reached out to the White House Budget Office for comment.
The administration has recently passed the government's funding bill and [Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985]However, the designation does not include the remaining 11 budgets, totaling nearly $3 billion.
The administration said the funds were “improperly designated by Congress as a legal emergency that stems from a side job with Democrats to avoid the spending cap signed into law in June 2023, and it has not agreed that additional spending is truly suited to the urgent need.”
The administration is referring to a bipartisan deal that was hit by House GOP leadership in 2023 to suspend the debt cap in 2023. The contract included a legislative portion known as the Financial Liability Act, which contained restrictions on defense and de-evacuation spending.
But a key element of that deal that Republicans have long been targeting is a bipartisan handshake agreement that has not been reflected in the law that allowed Democrats to further spend and offset, key to securing support for the overall deal to protect domestic programs.
However, some Republicans are rooting for Trump's recent move.
“Congress often uses the “urgent” designation to hide the reality of increased spending from Americans,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said in a statement this week. “I praise President Trump for taking on the swamp status quo with useless, unnecessary spending on behalf of American taxpayers and cutting billions of dollars.”
However, in a recent letter from Collins and Murray, the two say, “Regardless of our views on the Financial Liability Act and the ensuing implementation agreement, it is mandatory for us all to follow the law as written, so that we do not wish to do so.”
They also say the administration did not request some changes to the designation resulting from previous bipartisan deals.
“In this case, if the administration opposed some of the designations attributable to “side deals,” it could have been possible to request anomalies before enacting a continuous solution, as was done in connection with many other issues,” they wrote. “In addition, this new, fragmented approach calls for the availability of emergency funds in the ongoing resolution the President agreed to, to questions that include $8 billion in housing assistance.” ”
They are further concerned that the Office of the Budget “a long-standing interpretation of statutory provisions could destroy the expenditure process, making it more difficult for the Budget Committee to work collaboratively with the administration to improve priorities on behalf of Americans.
“The collaboration becomes even more challenging when the committee first informs us of such developments, rather than notifying us through official channels, as is the case here,” they added.
This is the latest example of lawmakers on both sides being caught off guard by actions by the Trump administration targeting specific funds approved by Congress. It also has been intertwined in court in recent months with previous administrative efforts to freeze funds approved by Congress.
