The Constitution gives the authority to tax and spend not to the head of state, but to the elected representatives who are closest to the people: the members of Congress. 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.
President Trump, however, has tried to take Congress’s constitutional power and make it his own. He has repeatedly ignored laws passed by the House and the Senate to spend money, or not spend it, based on his whims and agenda. He has violated the law at least six times, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency. That total does not include the government shutdown, when he continued to disregard the law.
