Throughout American history, officials have recognized that Congress has what’s known as “the power of the purse.” In our constitutional system, it’s lawmakers who have the sole authority to dictate government spending. It’s designed this way for a reason: As the editorial board of The New York Times explained last fall, “Money is power, and the founders of this country feared that a president would turn into a monarch if he alone could dictate how the government uses the federal Treasury.”

It’s a model that Donald Trump has never been altogether comfortable with. Indeed, Russell Vought, who leads the president’s White House budget office, made clear during his Senate confirmation hearings early last year that he believes in an executive branch that has vast powers when it comes to federal spending.

He clearly meant what he said. Consider three examples that emerged over the course of a week.

On Friday, Sept. 25, the White House decided unilaterally to cut nearly $1 billion in domestic spending appropriated by Congress, executing a tactic known as a “pocket rescission.” Days later, the Government Accountability Office reaffirmed its stance that this is illegal, and Team Trump said it didn’t care.

On Wednesday, Sept. 30, the Trump administration redirected tens of millions of dollars in U.S. military assistance from European and Middle Eastern countries to reward conservative governments in Latin America.

As The Washington Post reported, the State Department notified Congress of its intention to do so last month, at which point the top Democrats on the House and Senate foreign affairs committees placed a hold on the diversion of funds. Last week, the administration decided it would proceed with its plan anyway.

In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, the two Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, describing the move as a violation of statutory requirements about where the money could go. Team Trump apparently didn’t care about this, either.

On Friday, Oct. 2, the Times reported that the National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year as part of a brazen effort to circumvent Congress.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the Science, Space and Technology Committee, said, “The money should be granted as Congress intended, and essentially, they’re ignoring what Congress did.”

Or more to the point, they’re ignoring what Congress did again.

Even the White House’s taxpayer-financed propagandistic campaign ads are an example of the broader phenomenon: Congress allocated this money specifically for the Department of Homeland Security, and Team Trump decided to spend the funds on a very different kind of priority.

What we’re dealing with here is an obvious power-grab, with the White House repeatedly trying to wrest greater control over the nation’s purse strings from Capitol Hill.

But it’s also emblematic of a broader authoritarian push that intends to concentrate a foundational governmental power in the hands of one individual.

As the Times’ Jamelle Bouie summarized in a column last week, “It is difficult to overstate the way this subverts the basic structure of the American system. The power of the purse is paramount — it gives Congress ultimate authority over the entire operation of government. A president who wields this power is a president who can effectively cancel any law or nullify any agency he dislikes by refusing to spend the money appropriated for it.”

To date, the president and his operation have faced some important pushback in the courts, but by and large, the Republican-led Congress has been content to sit on its hands. There have been some complaints from GOP partisans — Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, is in a perpetual state of “concern” — but Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have done very little to reassert their institutional control over this basic governmental function.

If congressional power were to shift, however, to the White House’s political opponents in next month’s midterm elections, it’s likely Congress would be far less docile and obedient than it’s been over the last 22 months.

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