DeLauro to Vought: “You have provided ineffective and misleading counsel to the President”

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) wrote to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought on the Trump Administrations recent violation of the Republican 2025 full year continuing resolution. 

In her letter, DeLauro wrote: “You have provided ineffective and misleading counsel to the President of the United States with respect to the budgetary and legal implications of funding designated as an emergency requirement in the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2025 (the Act). I have reviewed the memorandum that you shared with the President on March 24, 2025, and it contains a number of mischaracterizations of law, which if followed through to your recommended conclusion, would lead to constitutional and statutory violations.”

“While middle-class Americans suffer a cost-of-living crisis you have taken great efforts to promulgate inadequate counsel which has put at risk: 

• $8 billion in funding for critical rental assistance that serves more than 7 million people at a time when homelessness and housing unaffordability have hit an all-time high.
• $2.1 billion in food and medicine for starving people and military support to protect national security abroad.
• Over $900 million in investments in NASA and other efforts to ensure the United States is the global leader in space.
• Over $600 million to combat international and domestic drug trafficking.
• And more,” DeLauro continued.

In the letter, DeLauro urges the Trump Administrationto designate all emergency funding in accordance with the law.

The full text of the letter is below. A PDF copy is available here.

Director Vought:

You have provided ineffective and misleading counsel to the President of the United States with respect to the budgetary and legal implications of funding designated as an emergency requirement in the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2025 (the Act). I have reviewed the memorandum that you shared with the President on March 24, 2025, and it contains a number of mischaracterizations of law, which if followed through to your recommended conclusion, would lead to constitutional and statutory violations.

As you are aware, paragraphs (2), (11), and (12) of section 1110(a) of the Act provide $12.375 billion in nondefense discretionary appropriations as emergency funding. As required by the law governing the discretionary caps, in order to avoid indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts known as sequestration, the President must also separately designate any of those emergency amounts. 

In order to prevent the President from (1) intentionally causing a sequestration, and (2) unilaterally and capriciously picking which of the emergency appropriations to make available, Chairman Cole and Speaker Johnson included a safeguard of Congress’s interests. Specifically, they included section 1110(b), which mandates that the $12.375 billion shall be available “only if the President subsequently so designates all such amounts and transmits such designations to the Congress.” Chairman Cole and Speaker Johnson’s restrictions on the President were very simple: the Administration must either take all of the money, or they get none of the money.

This provision of law is not new. It has been included in nearly every appropriations Act governed by statutory caps for more than twenty years. You correctly implemented this provision when it was included in numerous laws during your previous tenure as Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during President Trump’s first term, demonstrating that you understand this is an “all-or-nothing” proposition. 

However, your March 24, 2025, memorandum misled the President. Your memorandum recommended that the President designate some—but not all—of the emergency funding. The President followed your recommendation. Your memorandum also told the President that “the designated funding will be immediately available for obligation and expenditure.” Yet you have demonstrated your awareness that, in accordance with Chairman Cole and Speaker Johnson’s section 1110(b) guardrail, this would constitute a choice by the President to make none of the funds available. 

Your misleading counsel has made sure that the Chairman Cole and Speaker Johnson’s legislative guardrails have been violated, which would mean that none of the money is available. If you direct agencies to spend this money you would be requiring them to draw money from the Treasury, absent an appropriation made by law, and in contravention of section 1341(a) of title 31 of United States Code. Knowing and willful violations of that provision of law carry with them the threat of fines and imprisonment. In this vein, I fear that your inadequate counsel may ultimately subject the hard-working public servants of the Executive Branch to personal liability.

While middle-class Americans suffer a cost-of-living crisis you have taken great efforts to promulgate inadequate counsel which has put at risk:

• $8 billion in funding for critical rental assistance that serves more than 7 million people at a time when homelessness and housing unaffordability have hit an all-time high.
• $2.1 billion in food and medicine for starving people and military support to protect national security abroad.
• Over $900 million in investments in NASA and other efforts to ensure the United States is the global leader in space.
• Over $600 million to combat international and domestic drug trafficking.
• And more.

It would be possible to ascribe your misleading counsel to mistaken analysis if you did not provide it to the President on the same day that you chose to hide OMB’s budget decisions from the world, in contravention of section 204 of the Executive Office of the President Appropriations Act, 2023. I do not know why you are afraid of the transparency that simple but important reporting requirement provides for the American taxpayers, but that illegal action must be rectified immediately.

I hope that in the future you will faithfully and consistently execute and uphold the law. In the interim, I have shared a copy of this letter with Susan Wiles, White House Chief of Staff, with the recommendation that the President designate all emergency funding in the Act in accordance with section 1110(b), which is the only way to guarantee the critical resources and services mentioned above.

 Sincerely,

Rosa L. DeLauro
Ranking Member
Committee on Appropriations

Cc:       Hon. Mike Johnson, Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives
            Hon. Tom Cole, Chairman, U.S. House Committee on Appropriations
            Susan Wiles, White House Chief of Staff

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