The historical record is clear: the president has no inherent power to refuse to spend funds Congress appropriated

For all of American history, Congress, not the president, has had the ultimate power to determine how government funds are spent. Few principles are as fundamental to the structure of government enshrined in the Constitution.

And yet, President Trump and senior officials now serving in the executive branch have asserted that the president has the constitutional power to refuse to spend — that is, “impound” — funds appropriated by Congress. Not only is this view incorrect, it represents an extreme departure from over 200 years of constitutional history and practice. Nothing in the Constitution’s text and structure, federal case law, or American history supports the existence of a presidential power to impound. To the contrary, and as Protect Democracy describes in detail in a new paper, The Myth of Presidential Impoundment Power, these sources of authority make clear that Congress, not the president, holds the power of the purse.

After addressing founding principles and applicable law, the lion’s share of the paper is devoted to correcting mischaracterizations of the history of presidential impoundments — in particular those made by the Center for Renewing America (CRA), which served until recently as a home to the main proponents of a purported presidential power to impound. In the paper, we summarize a detailed analysis (attached as an appendix) of every example CRA offers in support of the claim that an inherent presidential power to impound has been widely accepted and acted upon throughout American history. We demonstrate that, contrary to CRA’s broad claims, there is no inherent presidential power to impound.

Find a searchable, sortable version of the appendix linked here.