The Purse-String Surrender: How Congress Traded Its Most Fundamental Power for the Convenience of Never Having to Vote
Article I of the Constitution grants Congress — and Congress alone — the authority to appropriate public funds. It is the most democratically essential power the Founders assigned to the legislature, the mechanism by which the people's representatives control the people's money. Congress has been quietly dismantling that power for decades, and the political class of both parties has found the arrangement entirely satisfactory.