AP Syllabus focus:
‘Congress can appropriate or withhold funds to shape bureaucratic behavior. This “power of the purse” is a key oversight tool and a check on executive action.’
Congress’s strongest practical leverage over the executive branch is money. By controlling funding levels, timing, and conditions, Congress can steer how agencies act, reward compliance, and punish resistance without rewriting entire statutes.
Core idea: funding as oversight
What “power of the purse” means
Congress influences the bureaucracy not only by passing laws, but by deciding whether, when, and on what terms agencies receive resources to carry those laws out.
Power of the purse: Congress’s constitutional authority to raise revenue and appropriate (authorise spending of) federal funds, enabling it to shape and constrain executive-branch action.
Because most agency activity requires staff, contracts, grants, and technology, funding decisions become a continuous accountability mechanism that operates even when agencies technically have legal authority to act.
Why it works as a check
Funding oversight is effective because it targets agency capacity:
This Congressional Research Service diagram shows the life cycle of appropriated funds—budget authority enacted by Congress, apportionment by OMB, agency obligations (legal commitments), and eventual outlays (payments). It illustrates how Congress’s appropriation creates (or limits) the practical capacity of agencies to hire staff, sign contracts, and carry out programs. Seeing the steps clarifies why changing funding levels or timing can reshape executive-branch action without rewriting substantive law. Source
Appropriating funds expands what an agency can do (more enforcement, faster processing, more investigations).
Withholding or reducing funds limits what an agency can do (fewer inspections, delayed implementation, narrower reach).
Conditioning funds can require specific behaviours (reporting, compliance benchmarks, or limits on certain activities).
The appropriations process as an oversight tool
Appropriations and constraints
Congress can write spending laws that do more than provide a dollar amount. Appropriations can also:
Specify line-item purposes (what money may be used for).
Set time limits (money must be obligated by a deadline).
Require reports and audits before additional funds are released.
Prohibit use of funds for disfavoured actions (e.g., “no funds may be used to…”).
Appropriation: A law passed by Congress that permits federal agencies to spend specific amounts of money for specific purposes.
These limits are oversight because they force agencies to align implementation with congressional preferences or risk violating spending law.
Riders and conditions
Appropriations bills can include riders, which are policy provisions attached to spending measures. Riders can:
Block agency actions indirectly by making them unfunded.
Force procedural steps (consultation, public notice, or submission of plans).
Shape priorities by earmarking funds for some programmes while starving others.
Rider: A policy condition attached to a funding bill that changes or restricts how money may be used, often without passing a separate substantive law.
Riders matter because they are difficult for the executive to ignore when agencies need funds to operate.
Withholding funds: leverage and consequences
Cuts, freezes, and delays
Congress may signal disapproval through:
Budget cuts to an agency or a specific programme.
Funding freezes (holding spending flat despite inflation or workload increases).
Delayed appropriations, creating uncertainty that can slow hiring, contracting, and long-term planning.
Even when an agency remains legally responsible for a mission, reduced resources can change day-to-day policy outcomes by narrowing enforcement or limiting service delivery.
Continuing resolutions and shutdown pressure
When Congress does not pass full-year appropriations, it may use a continuing resolution (CR) to keep funding temporarily at existing or limited levels.
Continuing resolution (CR): A temporary law that funds agencies for a short period when regular appropriations have not been enacted.
CRs function as oversight because they can:
Keep agencies on a shorter leash with frequent renewal votes.
Prevent new initiatives by restricting funding to prior-year patterns. If neither appropriations nor a CR passes, a shutdown can occur for affected operations, increasing political pressure on the executive branch and agencies to accept Congress’s terms.
Incentives, accountability, and separation of powers
Why Congress prefers funding tools
Funding oversight can be faster and more targeted than rewriting authorising statutes. It allows Congress to:
Respond to agency performance problems within a fiscal year.
Control implementation details without passing broad new policy.
Create bargaining leverage in conflicts with the president and executive agencies.
Limits and trade-offs
Power-of-the-purse oversight is influential but not absolute:
Some spending is effectively harder to reduce quickly due to prior commitments or multi-year obligations.
Overuse of restrictions can reduce administrative flexibility, making implementation less effective.
Funding fights can produce instability, harming long-term planning and potentially weakening programme performance—sometimes against Congress’s own goals.
FAQ
Yes, by adding a rider that bars funds from being used to implement or enforce the rule.
Some obligations pause while others continue if funded by prior-year or multi-year appropriations; terms depend on contract language and legal availability of funds.
Often not. Many conditions are written for a single fiscal year, requiring Congress to renew them to keep the restriction in place.
Through internal controls, legal counsel review, accounting codes, and inspector general audits designed to prevent “misuse of funds” violations.
Line-items can target a disliked activity while preserving capacity for other missions, reducing political backlash and unintended service disruptions.
Practice Questions
(2 marks) Define “power of the purse” and explain one way it can be used to oversee the bureaucracy.
1 mark: Accurate definition linking Congress to appropriations/withholding funds.
1 mark: One explained method (e.g., cutting funds, attaching conditions/riders, using a CR to constrain activity).
(5 marks) Explain how Congress can use appropriations to influence executive-branch agencies, and analyse one benefit and one drawback of using funding conditions as an oversight strategy.
1 mark: Explains appropriations as specifying amounts and permitted purposes.
1 mark: Explains conditions/riders or targeted line-items as constraints on agency behaviour.
1 mark: Analysis of one benefit (e.g., targeted, quicker leverage, enforces accountability).
1 mark: Analysis of one drawback (e.g., reduces flexibility, creates instability, risk of shutdown/inefficiency).
1 mark: Clear linkage to oversight/checking executive action throughout.
