A watchdog group on Monday sued the Trump administration over its decision to remove a public tracker of how the government spends funds appropriated by Congress.
The director of the office of management and budget (OMB), Russell Vought, has sought to justify taking down the tracker, telling Congress in March that the tool “requires the disclosure of sensitive, predecisional and deliberative information”.
“Such disclosures have a chilling effect on the deliberations within the executive branch,” he added.
But the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the non-profit group Protect Democracy in US district court in Washington DC, says that federal law requires the OMB to publicly post apportionment documents.
“Congress mandated prompt transparency for apportionments to prevent abuses of power and strengthen Congress’s and the public’s oversight of the spending process,” the suit says. “Absent this transparency, the president and OMB may abuse their authority over the apportionment of federal funds without public or congressional scrutiny or accountability.”
The Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, also challenged Vought’s rationale earlier in April, according to Fed Scoop.
“As apportionments are legally binding decisions on agencies under the Antideficiency Act, we note that such information, by definition, cannot be predecisional or deliberative,” the agency wrote in a letter to Vought. “This is very concerning because of the potential implications for review of such records for federal audits, congressional oversight, specifically with regard to Congress’s power of the purse.”
The Protect Democracy suit asks the court to declare that the OMB’s decision to remove the tracker was unlawful and to require the agency to restore it.
Congressional Democrats have also raised alarm about the removal of the tracker.
“Congress enacted these requirements over a Democratic president’s objections on a bipartisan basis because our constituents, and all American taxpayers, deserve transparency and accountability for how their money is being spent,” the representative Rosa DeLauro and the senator Patty Murray said in a joint statement in March. “Taking down this website is not just illegal – it is a brazen move to hide this administration’s spending from the American people and from Congress.”
The website was activated after legislation passed during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a similar suit earlier in April asking for restoration of the tracker.
