Non-Partisan Watchdog: President Trump and Russ Vought Continue to Steal from America’s Students and Schools
WASHINGTON — Today, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a decision finding that the Department of Energy violated the Impoundment Control Act. After investigating delayed awards for the Department of Energy’s Renew America’s Schools Program, GAO confirmed what we already knew: President Trump and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought’s theft of appropriated funds violates the Impoundment Control Act.
This decision respects Congress’s constitutional primacy over appropriations and the Congress’s role in passing annual appropriations Acts, including appropriations to provide funding for schools to help schools decrease energy costs, improve indoor air quality, and foster healthier learning environments.
“President Trump, Russ Vought, and Secretary Wright continue to steal from Americans to concentrate absolute power in the executive branch. This time, they are stealing from our nation’s schoolchildren, who deserve a healthy environment to learn in – and from school districts looking to lower their energy costs. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), our government’s preeminent nonpartisan watchdog, has yet again plainly demonstrated that the Department of Energy is engaged in a broad pattern of unlawfully freezing critical energy investments, forcing Americans to pay higher energy bills,” said House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03). “Their unlawful impoundments are not limited to Renew America’s Schools; they are threatening vital clean energy and efficiency initiatives that help drive down costs and modernize our infrastructure. I will continue to say it: Russ Vought is behind the lawless destruction and upheaval of our government and must be removed from his position. Russ Vought is an unelected bureaucrat, much like those he professes to detest, and he has decided that his views, and his priorities, are superior to the priorities, directives, and decisions of the Democratic and Republican representatives in the United States Congress. He has shown time and again that he is willing to break the law and hurt Americans in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. He must be stopped.”
“GAO’s legal determination confirms the illegality of DOE’s wider pattern of freezing appropriated funds for energy programs. DOE's delays of critical energy funding for policy reasons lay bare an appalling betrayal of working families,” said Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Marcy Kaptur (D-OH-09). “These program freezes cede our global clean energy leadership to Communist China and force Americans to pay higher energy bills. DOE’s partisan overreach must end now. They must release the funds immediately so communities and families can drive down costs, improve our infrastructure, and secure America’s energy independence in perpetuity.”
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched the $500 million Renew America’s Schools Program to promote the implementation of energy improvements at K-12 public schools across the country. This first-of-its-kind investment aims to help school communities make energy upgrades that will decrease energy use and costs, improve indoor air quality, and foster healthier learning environments. To date, the Renew America’s Schools Program has invested hundreds of millions in public school districts across America, supporting capacity-building initiatives for energy management at over two dozen Local Educational Agencies (LEAs), and funding improvement projects at more than 400 facilities across 36 states – directly benefiting over 197,000 students and 14,000 teachers.
In April, Ranking Member DeLauro and Vice Chair Murray first released a joint tracker on the funds President Trump and Russ Voght are stealing from American communities. This tracker—the first of its kind—puts a spotlight on the frozen funds across our government, including the $77 billion for Department of Energy programs. See the updated tracker here.
Ranking Member DeLauro has been sounding the alarm on impoundment since President Trump was reelected. In December 2024, she released this fact sheet laying the groundwork on President Trump’s uninformed and unconstitutional impoundment plan.
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