Lautz is a government affairs manager at the National Taxpayers Union, which advocates for fiscally conservative policies. Bydlak directs the budget policy work of the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank.
This is part of a series advocating for parts of legislation soon to be proposed in the House, dubbed the Protecting Our Democracy Act, designed to improve democracy's checks and balances by curbing presidential power.
As debate rages inside and outside of Washington over the health of American democracy, it's past time for Congress to address one of the most significant problems in our system of checks and balances: presidential administrations usurping the power of the purse, and lawmakers all too happy to let them.
The Founders were clear in their intent for this separation of power between the branches. James Madison, who would serve in the House and as secretary of state before becoming the fourth president, wrote in"Federalist No. 58" that the House "cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government," adding: "This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure."
The Constitution reflects Madison's perspective. Article 1, Section 7 states that "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives," and Section 8 asserts that "Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Section 9 affirms that "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." It is hard to imagine how the Framers could have been clearer.
Over recent decades, however, Congress has increasingly abdicated these powers to a growing executive branch. The problem is illustrated by numerous and prominent abuses of congressionally appropriated funds by presidents of both parties.
Last year, Donald Trump reprogrammed $3.8 billion worth of Defense Department money for a border wall that Congress refused to fund at his desired levels — a move a federal appeals court partially rolled back last summer. And Trump's first impeachment trial was focused in part on a similar withholding of funds for aid to Ukraine.
When Barack Obama was president, a lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act's risk-based payments to health insurers became a major purse strings fight between him and a Congress controlled by Republicans. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court last year.
Arguments about the congressional power of the purse were often featured in the debate over the military operations of George W. Bush's administration, with some of the toughest pushback from Joe Biden when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Such fights threaten the integrity and transparent flow of taxpayer dollars, and lawsuits and inter-branch warfare cost further time, money and effort. But there are solutions: Title V of the Protecting our Democracy Act would reassert the congressional power of the purse and recalibrate the constitutional imbalance over who controls taxpayer dollars.
The legislation would require the executive branch and its powerful Office of Management and Budget to release congressionally appropriated funds with enough time for agencies to actually obligate and spend the money before their authority to do so expires. It would also require OMB to set up a public website for reporting all its decisions on when and how fast agencies may spend funds that are released to them. This process, called apportionment, now has little transparency — and that makes it nearly impossible for either lawmakers or non-governmental watchdogs to safeguard taxpayer dollars.
The bill would require presidents to report to Congress on outstanding balances of taxpayer funds that expired or were cancelled in the past few years — a direct analog to the Constitution's stipulation that "a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." More practically, the provision would give lawmakers important insights into how money moves (or doesn't move) through a complex and often byzantine executive branch system.
None of these reforms alone would fix the existing power imbalance between Congress and the president. Lawmakers also should reform the National Emergencies Act, enhance the roles of federal inspectors general in reporting abuse and misuse of taxpayer funds, and enact more robust legal protections for whistleblowers in government — particularly those in the executive branch.
The Protecting Our Democracy Act, while far from a perfect piece of legislation, would make important strides in all of these areas.
Ensuring proper oversight of taxpayer dollars requires a strong Congress. Only the legislature can get access to — and constitutionally demand — information from the executive, but sadly the House and Senate have found it easier to abdicate this responsibility. Stronger congressional control over the nation's purse strings would ensure that all American citizens could effectively petition their representatives in government over the use of taxpayer dollars. It would enable elected members of Congress, and non-governmental oversight groups, to exercise greater input over how the executive branch spends our money.
And ultimately, it would strengthen a democracy that sorely needs to build some muscle.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.