03.24.25

Merkley Calls on Vought to Immediately Restore Website Listing Funds Spent by the Trump Administration

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, called on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought to immediately restore the website listing funds that Congress appropriated and have since been sent out the door by the Trump Administration. The deleted portal provided a public accounting of when and where the Trump Administration has made appropriations passed by Congress available for expenditure, a process known as "apportionment." Congress has mandated this publication since 2022 after the Trump Administration illegally withheld funds from Ukraine in 2019. 

"Having a public record of where taxpayer dollars are spent is critical to ensuring the Trump Administration is following the law. Unilaterally impounding funds is illegal, and Trump and Vought are trying to hide that they are gutting the federal government piece by piece," said Ranking Member Merkley. "Congress passed a law mandating transparency of the executive branch’s spending process in response to the illegal activity of the first Trump Administration and today's action is confirmation that Trump and Vought are planning to illegally withhold funds again. The laws Congress passes are not suggestions, and the President is not a king."

Vought, in two separate nomination hearings in front of the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, committed to follow the law and to continue publicly posting all apportionments. During the Biden Administration, then-OMB Director Shalanda Young consistently obeyed the law in publicly listing all government apportionments, with no negative national security consequences.

Vought, the architect of Trump's Project 2025, has since become a key ally of Elon Musk in DOGE’s destruction of the federal government. With Vought’s aid, Musk has illegally fired thousands of federal workers and begun the wholesale dismantling of federal agencies. Vought previously called to put federal workers “in trauma.”

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