The unlawful and unconstitutional actions of Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency constitute a “Naked Power Grab,” according to the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, Representative Rosa DeLauro (D – Connecticut).

“The Constitution is clear about many things. There are three branches of government. Presidents can only be elected to two terms. And Congress, not the executive branch, has the power of the purse, meaning the power to control federal spending. It is right there, as clear as day in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7: ‘No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.'”

This clause of the U.S. Constitution is known as the Appropriations Clause, which is normally an uncontested and uncontroversial principle of constitutional law.

DeLauro argues that “this is a bedrock principle of our government, which President Trump and his unchecked billionaire buddy are attempting to subvert. They are trying to do so through a variety of avenues, including using social media platforms to berate elected officials into submitting to their demands, impounding funds — which is nothing less than stealing congressionally appropriated dollars promised to Americans — and empowering the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.”

The U.S. Congress explains the historical background of the Appropriations Clause: “The Appropriations Clause makes part of American constitutional law a regular practice of British Parliaments dating from at least the Glorious Revolution of the late seventeenth century. Parliament’s function of granting its consent to raise revenue as a supplement to the Monarch’s ordinary revenue sources had by then been an established and powerful tool. However, prior to the Glorious Revolution, Parliament does not seem to have regularly directed its attention to decisions of how voted sums would be used. The view of King Charles II’s chief ministers in the decades prior to the Glorious Revolution, for example, was that the Monarch was the master of his own money and that his ministers had discretion to apply voted sums to defray any casual expenses, of any nature whatsoever. The ministers viewed a 1665 supply bill passed by the House of Commons, for example, as not fit for [a] monarchy because it included a clause of appropriation, that is, legislative language stating that sums the bill raised could be used only for the costs of war against the Dutch Republic. However, when King William III and Queen Mary II jointly assumed the throne in 1689, they recognized Parliament’s power to legislate supply and expenditure. Thereafter, clauses of appropriations became common features of parliamentary legislation.”

The experience of the American War of Independence and the rejection of monarchical rule arguably reinforced the principle of legislative control of appropriations in the fledgling United States.

The U.S. Congress emphasizes that “when the American states framed new systems of government after Independence, most state constitutions made legislative authorization a prerequisite for drawing any funds from a state treasury. … Perhaps owing to the pedigree then enjoyed by the view that a legislature should be solely endowed with the authority to identify the purposes for which public money may be spent, the Appropriations Clause itself attracted little debate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.”

The Appropriations Clause is popularly referred to as “the power of the purse” and is rightly considered central to constitutional law on all spending by the federal government of the United States.

The U.S. Congress provides additional information in the Constitution Annotated online.

Representative Rosa DeLauro’s comments were published in an op-ed piece in The New York Times.

For more information on History and Constitutional Law, see the Historians Council on the Constitution at the Brennan Center for Justice, which is “an independent, nonpartisan law and policy organization that works to reform, revitalize, and when necessary, defend our country’s systems of democracy and justice.”