The White House is covering up its spending decisions

We’re suing to force the executive branch to disclose how it’s spending taxpayer dollars

Federal law requires the White House to disclose key federal spending decisions, known as “apportionments,” on a public website. But on March 29th, several days after it had already pulled the site down, the administration informed Congress that it’s violating that law and intends to continue doing so. (Literally — they sent a letter confirming this. You can read it here.) You can see what’s left of the website here.

Today, we filed suit to restore public access to this critical information — again, access that the law requires.

Like any cover-up, the issue here is not just whether the White House is following the law. It openly admits it’s not. The question is why. Why is the White House so committed to concealing how it’s spending taxpayer money that officials are willing to break the law to do so?

The truth is, we don’t know what they’re hiding. But we’ve filed suit to find out.

Congress requires the White House to show the receipts on where it’s spending taxpayer money

Apportionments are an essential part of how the federal government operates. Congress passes government funding bills that tell the executive branch how much money it must spend for different purposes. Apportionments are the White House’s way of doling out the money to federal agencies — sort of like an allowance. They are legally binding plans, issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), that tell agencies how and when they may spend the funds Congress has appropriated. Agencies generally cannot actually spend money until they receive an apportionment.

During President Trump’s first term, OMB used the apportionment process to withhold funds Congress had appropriated for Ukraine. That withholding violated the Impoundment Control Act. And in 2022, Congress responded by requiring OMB to disclose its apportionments on a public website — so that if any future administration tried to abuse its power through the apportionment process, Congress and the public would know and could hold them accountable.

But accountability is really only possible if the public can access and understand these documents, and the website that OMB stood up in 2022 was both difficult to use and difficult to understand. That’s why Protect Democracy launched OpenOMB.org last October. OpenOMB is a separate website that makes it easier for Congress, press, and the public to track apportionments by providing a simpler and more organized interface to engage with and search through the information posted by OMB.

In the six months since we launched OpenOMB, everyone from congressional committees and reporters to university libraries and nonprofits have relied on the site to monitor federal spending.

But, apparently, the Trump administration does not appreciate this transparency. After almost three years of posting apportionments online, OMB took its site down. In letters to Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, OMB Director Russell Vought erroneously claimed that the site disclosed “sensitive, predecisional, and deliberative information.” (Translation: He doesn’t want anyone scrutinizing the administration’s decisionmaking.)

By shielding spending information from Congress and the public, this move could allow DOGE and Vought unlawfully to cut funds with little oversight. It enables them to make decisions about taxpayer money without taxpayers knowing.

Ensuring spending transparency is a longstanding, bipartisan concern

When Congress enacted this apportionment transparency requirement — on a bipartisan basis — it sought to protect its constitutional power of the purse and strengthen oversight of federal spending. In 2022, that law received support from organizations across the ideological spectrum. In recent weeks, those organizations and others — including R Street, National Taxpayers Union, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Project on Government Oversight, and Protect Democracy — have joined together again to express concern about OMB’s decision to take down its apportionment site, call on OMB to comply with the law, and express doubt about OMB Director Vought’s stated explanation for the change.

As Professor Samuel Bagenstos — the OMB general counsel who first implemented the apportionment transparency law after Congress enacted it — recently explained, Vought’s excuses for breaking the law are “simply another way of saying that he doesn’t like the policy enacted by Congress.”

But not liking a law doesn’t justify breaking it. That is why we filed suit to force OMB to bring its site back online and restore transparency around federal spending decisions. (We also applaud our partners at CREW and Public Citizen, who likewise filed suit last week.)

And we echo the ranking member and vice chair of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, respectively, in asking: What is the White House trying to hide?

The public has a right to know.