WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s administration illegally withheld $8 billion in funding to the National Institutes of Health, blocking critical medical research and threatening thousands of jobs nationwide, according to a congressional watchdog agency.
The decision by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan agency, follows similar findings of the White House’s illegal impoundment of spending previously approved by Congress, including funds for electric vehicle charging, museums and libraries, Head Start and K-12 schools.
It’s also the latest example of how the Trump administration is trampling on Congress’s constitutional power over the purse. In this case, the White House has been found in violation of the Impoundment Control Act, which restricts the president’s ability to withhold appropriated funds from being spent by the executive branch. The law was passed in 1974 in response to President Richard Nixon’s attempts to impound funds for programs he didn’t like.
“NIH has offered no evidence that it did not withhold amounts from obligation or expenditure, and it has not shown that the delay was a permissible programmatic one,” the GAO said in a statement on Tuesday.
