🔵 The Portal: Trump’s overspending problem

IN THIS EDITION

Homeland Security’s money problem

What we’re watching

Republicans turn up heat on the GAO

THE TOP

Homeland Security’s money problem

Happy Monday morning.

The Trump administration has a spending problem.

While the White House is seeking to shrink the budgets of most agencies, the Homeland Security Department is on track to run out of money this month due to a spending spree. The GOP’s reconciliation bill will help with that, if it passes, but appropriators worry the issue sets a bad precedent for agencies to burn through cash with little regard for the amount of funding Congress has given them.

“I’d love to hear what their Plan B is,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), whose office has done the analysis that DHS is nearly $1 billion over budget already.

Murphy has been sounding the alarm for months that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is spending at an unsustainable rate. Murphy noted the GOP and DHS hope the reconciliation bill will stave off the problem, but he said there’s no guarantee DHS won’t continue to spend beyond its means.

Spending spree. The reconciliation package would provide around $66 billion to DHS, including $46.5 billion for construction of the border wall. The agency has been spending through the roof to make sure U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has enough cash to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportations. Its budget for FY2025 is $107 billion, of which $65 billion is discretionary. So far it is nearly $1 billion in the red, according to Murphy.

Murphy confronted Noem about the issue during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in May, calling the agency’s actions “wildly illegal.” At the hearing, Noem didn’t address the funding concerns.

It’s a potential problem that even Republicans are worried about. Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), the House Appropriations Committee cardinal for DHS, said the agency is at risk of breaking the law with its overspending if the reconciliation money doesn’t come through.

“There’s a lot riding on reconciliation for DHS,” Amodei said.

Department leadership also acknowledged they need the reconciliation money to avoid an issue. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Noem is rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, and is “reprioritizing appropriated dollars” to do so.

“President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is critical to ensure we have the funding to secure our homeland for generations and deliver on the American people’s mandate for safety and security,” McLaughlin said.

Antideficiency Act. DHS would be violating a law called the Antideficiency Act. The law prohibits agencies from spending more money than has been appropriated for its budget.

Plenty of agencies have violated this law before, but no one has ever faced any legal consequences, according to the GAO, the watchdog that enforces the law.

In 2024, under the Biden administration, the Defense Department, the Agriculture Department, Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and Homeland all submitted Antideficiency Act violations. The difference, though, is that those agencies took their own actions to punish employees responsible for those violations, so no further action was needed, according to the GAO.

Agencies must report any violations to the president, Congress and the GAO. It’s unclear when exactly charges would be brought against an agency official for such an infraction.

Interestingly, the law is linked to the Impoundment Control Act, the statute that White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has said is unconstitutional. The ICA amended the Antideficiency Act to set rules for how the president can refuse or not refuse to spend congressionally appropriated dollars.

OMB didn’t respond to a request for comment on the potential Antideficiency Act violation.

Vought didn’t comment on Homeland Security’s potential violations of the Antideficiency Act during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last week, but he praised the law itself.

Here’s Vought:

Funding Homeland Security. Homeland Security is already one of the most complicated appropriations bills that the spending panels will craft.

It was the only bill not to make it out of the Senate Appropriations Committee last year. Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), who’s the head of the funding bill in the Senate, has said she plans to reverse that curse this year.

If Democrats think the department will just blow through whatever funds they give them anyway, that will make it harder to come to a bipartisan deal. It’s the opposite of the problem looming over the broader appropriations process, which is that Democrats are concerned the Trump administration will refuse to spend the money Congress appropriates.

Even if Homeland gets the reconciliation boost — we’ll see if that package gets Trump’s signature this week — its funding problems aren’t going away.

– Samantha Handler

THE WEEK AHEAD

What we’re watching

The Senate and the House will work on the GOP reconciliation bill. Republicans aim to pass the legislation by July 4.

Happy Fourth of July!

OH NO THE GAO

Republicans turn up heat on the GAO

The GAO is in for a huge funding battle on multiple fronts, not just impoundment.

House Appropriations Committee Republicans approved a bill last week that would slash the watchdog’s budget by 49%. The bill also would prevent the GAO from bringing a lawsuit against the Trump administration for not spending appropriated funds, or impounding them. OMB Director Russ Vought upped his attacks on the watchdog recently, calling it partisan and decrying the nearly 30 impoundment investigations the GAO is conducting.

“We are going through a programmatic review,” Vought said at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last week. “Each set of funding is different and we will continue to evaluate. GAO is improperly calling programmatic review impoundments.”

The GAO has only ever brought a lawsuit against a presidential administration once, and it was resolved before the suit actually got underway. The GAO would first go through congressional channels before doing so. GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro would have to report the findings to Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) before bringing a suit.

Given how House Republicans are reacting to the GAO, Dodaro isn’t likely to get Johnson and Grassley’s blessing to do so. The GAO can still bring a lawsuit anyway, as long as this appropriations bill doesn’t become law. Republicans batted down a Democratic amendment that would have stripped the measure from the bill.

“There’s a sense that they’ve not been as responsive as they should be to the majority of this chamber,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said of the GAO.

While this appropriations bill won’t become law — funding bills must be bipartisan to get through the Senate — it’s unclear how hard the GOP will keep fighting against the watchdog.

– Samantha Handler