By Jennifer Schutt | AZMirror
The White House budget office has until Friday to republish a website detailing the pace at which it plans to spend money approved by Congress, following a federal court ruling.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in an opinion filed Saturday denied the Trump administration’s request to halt a lower court’s ruling that required it to once again post information about spending decisions called apportionments.
The 27-page opinion, written by Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, said that to “grant the Executive a stay pending appeal in this separation-of-powers standoff would effectively cut the Congress’s purse strings.”
“No President would allow a usurper to command our armed forces. And no Congress should be made to wait while the Executive intrudes on its plenary power over appropriations and disclosure thereof,” Henderson wrote. “The public interest is best served by maintaining the separation-of-powers balance struck by the Constitution and especially so if the challenged statutes keep the citizenry abreast regarding duly appropriated expenditures.”
Henderson was nominated to the Circuit Court in 1990 by then-President George H.W. Bush, a few years after then-President Ronald Reagan nominated her as a federal district judge in 1986.
Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel for Protect Democracy Project, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit, released a statement cheering the Circuit Court’s decision.
