Supreme court building photo9/1/2023 A few agencies receive funding through a combination of appropriations and external fees, such as antitrust funding for the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. Most federal agencies are funded through direct appropriations that Congress passes into law each year. “It's the first time in history that any court has ever ruled that Congress itself could violate the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution,” Frazelle said. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found that clause also limited Congress and ruled the CFPB’s structure violated the Constitution because its funding comes from outside the appropriations process.īrian Frazelle, a senior appellate counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, said that if the justices uphold that novel twist, the case could mean a sea change in the understanding of what the Appropriations Clause was meant to do. Last year, for the first time ever, the U.S. The agency's survival is at risk in the case, which the Supreme Court will likely decide in their next term starting in October.Īt the core of the case is the Appropriations Clause, which prohibits government spending “but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Experts consider that exclusive “power of the purse” as a core part of the Constitution’s separation of powers because the legislature is a check on how a president can spend funds. The justices agreed last month to hear a case about the way Congress funded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when it created the independent agency in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Congress has used a clause in the Constitution for more than two centuries to control how the federal government spends funds, but the Supreme Court is poised to decide whether that same language also limits what lawmakers can do.
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