How did ICE break the bank?

Congress should ask the budget director

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is, by one estimate, on track to be $1 billion over budget. And with more than three months left in the fiscal year, the agency is preparing to come hat in hand to Congress asking for more.

This Wednesday, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russell Vought will appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee.

At that hearing, senators should grill him on this apparent overspending. It will be a rare opportunity for the American people to learn about how the White House has been managing funds appropriated by Congress, how ICE spending is so dramatically over-budget, and why — by all appearances — the administration seems to be ignoring the laws Congress created to ensure that taxpayer dollars are responsibly managed.

Apportionments exist in part to prevent the administration from overspending

If you are wondering how agencies are allowed to spend money they don’t have, the answer is simple: They are not.

Since the 1870s, Congress has made it illegal for agencies to spend money that Congress hasn’t provided. In fact, the law preventing overspending comes with individual penalties for any federal employee caught violating it, from administrative discipline all the way up to two years of jail time.

To keep agencies from spending too much or too fast, Congress — as the branch of government vested with power over spending — gave the president a special planning tool: apportionments.

Read more: The historical fiction behind Musk & Vought's cuts

Apportionments work like an allowance. After Congress passes a spending bill and the president signs it into law, the president, through OMB, gives agencies money at certain rates or for specific projects. That is, rather than cutting a check to agencies once a year and trusting them to spend that money responsibly, Congress requires the president to “apportion” funds to make sure agencies don’t run out of money just to come back to Congress asking for more.

However, this year ICE is on track to exhaust the funding Congress gave it by July — two months before the end of the fiscal year. So what’s going on? Is OMB intentionally giving ICE more than it should (perhaps previewed by OMB’s reliance on the “safety of human life or protection of Federal property” continuing resolution exception in February)? Did it mistakenly give ICE too much money too quickly? Or is OMB carefully apportioning ICE’s funding, while ICE simply blows through it?

In short, we don’t know — and that’s a problem for both Congress and taxpayers.

For months OMB has been operating in the shadows, hiding information about how much, when, or for what purpose OMB is giving money to federal agencies like ICE, or whether it is withholding money from others.

OMB is attempting to conceal how it’s spending taxpayer dollars

In 2022, Congress passed a law requiring OMB to post apportionments on a public website to strengthen oversight of the spending process (Protect Democracy used that information to make a more user-friendly version at OpenOMB.org). OMB operated that website from July 2022 until this March, when OMB, under Vought, abruptly took down the site.

Read more: The White House is covering up its spending decisions

Since then, bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have asked the administration to restore the site, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has urged OMB to reinstate this apportionment data, which is “essential” to its work, and our organizations have filed suit to restore public access to this important database. But OMB continues to withhold this information from public view.

We do know, however, that agencies have been unlawfully withholding funds.

Last week, GAO determined that the government broke the law when it refused to spend funding for libraries, echoing a decision by a federal court that also highlighted the arbitrary nature of this government action — shutting down these programs without considering how libraries, museums, business centers, contractors, labor unions, states, and local governments rely on them to provide services to the American people.

The question is: How much money are OMB and other agencies illegally withholding or, like ICE, potentially overspending?

GAO reportedly has dozens more investigations underway, which may not even include funding that public reporting suggests OMB has recently frozen — billions of dollars at the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Departments of Interior and Health and Human Services. GAO has even reported to Congress that the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of the Treasury refused to respond to GAO’s questions about the status of any funding being potentially withheld beyond the funds included in the rescissions package currently under consideration in the Senate.

When Vought appears before the Senate Appropriations Committee this week, senators should question him about what funding OMB and other agencies are withholding, and why he took down the congressionally mandated apportionment site instead of showing Congress his work.

OMB should be managing our money well enough that it has nothing to hide.