DeLauro: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) released the following statement on President Trump and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought’s release of $15 billion in unlawfully impounded National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funds while they continue to unlawfully withhold funds from agencies across the federal government:

“OMB Director Russ Vought is defying the law that requires public reporting of all OMB apportionments—apparently to hide from the Congress and the public that he has been unlawfully halting life-saving biomedical research through the apportionment process. Only after public reporting and calls to release the funds did Russ Vought reverse course. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. 

“When OMB is not able to hide its budget decisions from Congress and the public, we and the American people are able to see in real time how Russ Vought is dictating the use and impoundment, or stealing, of taxpayer resources—allowing Congress the opportunity to intervene and our constituents the opportunity to weigh in. 

“However, there are likely thousands of apportionments being hidden from the Congress and the public at present, and we can only assume that the unlawful NIH freeze was not a one off. Already, there’s new reporting that OMB is using the same tactic to cut off resources that help farmers and rural communities and small businesses. This move is unlawful, and right now, there is no way to know the full scope of every taxpayer dollar the Trump Administration is withholding while they refuse to comply with the law that requires public disclosure of their legally-binding budget decisions.

“With each passing day, programs that help communities across the country—funded by both Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate and signed into law by the President—are being chaotically withheld with no rhyme or reason other than Russ Vought’s desire for absolute control. 

“Russ Vought’s serial law breaking shows that he is more interested in amassing power and trampling on Congress’s power of the purse than he is in working together to fund the government.”

DeLauro’s statement on the frozen NIH funds can be found here. Her statement celebrating the court decision to restore the OMB apportionments website can be found here.

Apportionments are legally binding budget decisions issued by the Office of Management and Budget under title 31 of the U.S. Code. These documents are final, decisional, and legally binding on agencies, and officials responsible for violating an apportionment may be subject to administrative discipline, including suspension without pay and termination, and the knowing and willful violation of an apportionment carries with it criminal penalties under the Antideficiency Act. 

The 2022 bipartisan appropriations Act required OMB to publicly post in an accessible format all approved apportionments within two business days, along with any footnotes, an explanation for those footnotes. The following year, Congress made those requirements permanent. Those bipartisan requirements have been carried out for the last three years without incident—allowing lawmakers and the public to track OMB’s legally binding budget decisions.

For more information on OMB’s legally-binding budget decisions, see the March 24 joint statement issued by Ranking Member DeLauro and Vice Chair Murray here, and Ranking Member DeLauro’s hand-edits to Director Vought’s letter on the topic here.

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