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It looks like President Trump may have redirected some funding immediately after he signed the omnibus legislation. He also blocked the rescinding of a large amount of funding for the military within the bill in another memorandum.

The redirection of funding was issued late Friday afternoon:

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:) In accordance with section 7058(d) of division K of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 (H.R. 1625; the “Act”), I hereby designate as an emergency requirement all funding so designated by the Congress in the Act pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, for the accounts referenced in section 7058(d). The details of this action are set forth in the enclosed memorandum from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Sincerely, DONALD J. TRUMP

According to the omnibus bill, the President would have roughly $150,000,000 dollars at his disposal now due to his declaration. There is some talk that he might also be able to appropriate the funds in creative ways outside of the designated destinations as this bill is filled with very broad “suggestions.”

He was also able to fully fund the Army Corps of Engineers, and since he declared a national emergency back in December of 2017, he could “reprogram” the funds for this agency to start building a wall on the southern border.

In addition, and also in December last year, Congress dropped the prohibition against use of Department of Defense funds for other purposes (originally H.R. 2810 which became Public Law No. 115-91).

Defense got the lion’s share of the omnibus allocation, and there’s no longer any legal block from Trump using some of that funding to build the Wall. And it looks like Ann Coulter agrees.

He’s already tweeted that the Wall is a defense measure. Could get interesting as he also tweeted “immediately.”

What’s Reprogramming?

Georgetown University has some more information on what exactly this process is, essentially agencies can direct their funding to wherever they please, with permission from the appropriation subcommittee in Congress:

From an appropriators’ perspective, reprogrammings are a necessary evil. Each appropriations subcommittee has its own statutory guidelines for when agencies can move funds and these guidelines must be followed. They are clearly spelled out both in statute and in accompanying reports. … Prohibitions against reprogramming funds within an appropriations account, however, vary among agencies and appropriations subcommittees, as there are no government-wide reprogramming rules. At some level, all agencies routinely move funds around within accounts as needs shift, and as a matter of sound budgeting. Much of this takes place without the knowledge of appropriators, or even high level agency officials.

What if the congressional committee does not approve of the use of funds? The professors state that the president and executive branch can simply ignore the congressional committee if they deny that the funds may be reprogrammed. Congress cannot implement new instructions for the federal agencies that have not already been proscribed into law:

While the courts have ruled that agencies aren’t legally required to follow nonstatutory limitations, violating instructions from the appropriations committee is generally not considered good practice. Getting Congressional approval is time consuming and, similar to the regular appropriations process, agencies must justify why they want to move the money. After spending a minimum of 9 months putting a bill together, it can be aggravating to appropriators when agencies come forward with proposed changes.

If the downside of ignoring Congress is hurt feelings, President Trump can manage.