None of the Funds, How Appropriations Riders Let Congress Say No to an Agency

There are four words in Washington more powerful than "I hereby resign" and a great deal harder to find. They are "none of the funds." Tuck them into the right paragraph of a spending bill, add a few more words after them, and a federal agency that had a plan on Monday has a problem on Tuesday. No repeal, no hearing marathon, no lawsuit. Just a sentence in a bill that says the money cannot be used for that.

Let me tell you why that matters, because folks, it is the closest thing in the Constitution to a master switch, and it has been sitting in plain view for two hundred and thirty-some years. The people who run the agencies know all about it. They just hope you don't.

What a limitation rider is

A rider is a provision attached to a bill that is mostly about something else. The kind that interests us here is the limitation rider, and it nearly always takes the same form: "None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to..." followed by the thing Congress wants stopped.

The beauty of it is the plain mechanics. Congress is not telling an agency to do anything. It is not rewriting the agency's founding statute, which would need its own bill, its own committee and its own filibuster fight. It is simply declining to pay for one activity. The agency stays in business, the law stays on the books, and the one thing Congress objects to goes unfunded for the year the bill covers.

Compare that with the alternatives. Repealing a law takes a bill that passes both chambers and gets signed or survives a veto. Overturning a regulation takes a vote under the Congressional Review Act, and only inside a narrow window. Suing takes years. A limitation rider rides on a bill the government needs to pass to keep the lights on, and that makes it the most practical way for Congress to say no.

The constitutional source, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7

Everything here grows from one sentence. Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 reads: "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law."

Read it the way a lawyer would. No money. Not "less money," not "most money." Drawn from the Treasury. Every dollar an agency spends has to come out of that account. But in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law. The only way out of the Treasury is a law, passed by both chambers and signed by the President or passed over a veto.

The Supreme Court has taken that text at its word. In Office of Personnel Management v. Richmond in 1990, the Court held that the Clause means what it says: if Congress has not authorized the payment, an executive officer cannot make it, no matter how sympathetic the claimant. The power of the purse belongs to Congress, and no clerk, secretary or president can print his own.

Madison explained why in Federalist No. 58, where he wrote that this power over the purse "may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon" with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people "for obtaining a redress of every grievance." The check is only as good as the willingness to use it. Which brings us to the riders.

Authorizing versus appropriating

You cannot understand riders without one distinction that Washington uses to confuse the public: the difference between authorizing and appropriating.

An authorization is a law that creates a program, defines what it may do and often sets a ceiling on what it may spend. An appropriation is the law that actually lets the Treasury pay out money for it. A program can be authorized and unfunded, and a program can, in practice, be funded without a current authorization, which happens all the time.

Why does this matter? Because it tells you which bill to look at when you want to stop something. The authorizing statute says what an agency may do. The appropriations bill says what it can afford to do this year. The second one passes every year, whether the agency likes it or not, which makes it a recurring opportunity to say no.

The House has a rule on the subject. House Rule XXI forbids an appropriation for a program that has not been authorized, and it forbids legislating on an appropriations bill, meaning tacking on changes to substantive law. The idea is to keep the two jobs separate, so that spending bills do not become a back door for rewriting everything. But there is an exception that swallows a lot of the rule.

The Holman Rule of 1876

In 1876 a member of the House from Indiana named William Holman got the House to adopt a rule that bears his name. It allows an amendment to an appropriations bill that would reduce the amount of money in the bill by cutting a particular program, or by cutting the salary of a federal officer, even if the amendment changes the law in the process. The test is whether the change really retrenches, meaning saves money.

It is a clever rule, because it turns the House's own ban on legislating inside out. A change that cuts spending may be proposed on a spending bill. If a member wants to cut a particular official's salary to a dollar, the Holman Rule is the road.

The rule has not been in force continuously. The House has dropped it and brought it back at different times, and it has been a subject of fights at the start of new Congresses, because every majority likes it better when it is the one with the pen. You can check the current House rules on the Clerk's website at the start of each Congress. The point for our purposes is that the House has always kept a way for members who want to shrink an agency to do it through the money.

The Boland Amendments, a rider with teeth

Now the famous example. In the early 1980s Congress was deeply split over American support for the Contra rebels fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. A Massachusetts Democrat, Representative Edward Boland, wrote a series of amendments to spending bills that restricted U.S. funding for the effort.

The first Boland Amendment, in December 1982, barred the CIA and the Defense Department from spending funds for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government. A broader version in October 1984 barred the CIA, the Defense Department and any other agency or entity involved in intelligence activities from using funds to support military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua. These were classic limitation riders. They did not repeal the Intelligence Authorization law. They did not order anyone to do anything. They said: this money may not be used for this purpose.

President Reagan signed the 1982 spending bill that carried the first of them, because he needed the rest of the bill. And that is the point worth putting in bold: the President usually signs the rider because he cannot afford to veto the spending bill it rides on. A rider on a must-pass bill is leverage.

What followed is a cautionary tale for both sides. Some in the administration sought other ways to keep the Contras supplied, and the resulting Iran-Contra affair became one of the major scandals of the decade, with investigations, indictments and a long public argument about whether the executive branch had evaded Congress's decision. Whatever you think of the policy, and plenty of conservatives defended the cause itself, the constitutional lesson is that when Congress uses its purse power, the executive branch must respect it, even when it disagrees. The answer to a bad rider is to win the vote next time, not to ignore the text.

Riders in the Senate, the minority's bargaining chip

Now we get to the part that matters to a party that expects to be in the minority. In the House, the majority controls the floor, so riders mostly come from the majority party's appropriations committee. In the Senate, things work differently.

Spending bills in the Senate generally need 60 votes to end debate under the cloture rule. That means a minority of at least 41 senators can hold up a must-pass bill, and the majority has to bargain. The currency of that bargain is very often a rider. A minority that says "we will supply the votes to keep the government open, and in exchange this paragraph must say that none of the funds may be used for such-and-such" is exercising a constitutional power in the most practical way available.

It is an old habit. The Hyde Amendment, the rider restricting federal funds for abortions, was first attached to a spending bill in 1976 and has been renewed in one form or another every year since, which shows how long a limitation rider can last when a Congress keeps re-adopting it. Whatever side of that issue you are on, notice the method: a policy that could not be enacted as a free-standing law was secured year after year through the appropriations process.

For conservatives, the lesson is practical. If a party expects to hold the Senate minority, the appropriations bill is where it will do most of its legislating. A rider is a way to protect a policy, to block a regulation or to defund an agency program without the 60 votes needed to pass a law outright, because the other side needs the spending bill more than it needs to say no to the rider. And we ought to be honest that the other party will use the same trick against us when it is in the minority.

The numbered argument, why Congress should use the purse

Here is the case for using riders more, in four short steps.

1. The Constitution made the purse Congress's. Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 gives Congress sole authority over the Treasury, and Article I, Section 8 gives it the power to tax and spend. If Congress will not use that power, the agencies fill the vacuum.
2. Agencies act on authority that Congress gave in broad language. A regulator who reads a decades-old statute to reach a brand-new power has done it with money that Congress can withhold. Withholding it forces the agency to come back and ask.
3. Riders are a form of accountability. A member who votes for a rider must put a name on it, and the voters can see what the member tried to stop. Compare that with a regulation written by an official nobody elected, where no member's name appears anywhere.
4. Riders are modest. They last as long as the bill, and they can be undone by the next one. That is a gentler remedy than abolishing a program, and a more democratic one, because it keeps the question alive in every election.

This is a theme we return to often on this blog, for instance in No Money Shall Be Drawn but by Appropriation, Congress's Power of the Purse and The CFPB Is Funded Without an Annual Vote of Congress, and That Should Worry Us, where the problem is exactly the absence of an annual vote on the money. An agency that has to ask for its money every year has to listen to the people who give it.

The other side's best argument

Fairness demands that we state the objection at full strength, the way its defenders would. It goes like this: "Riders are legislative graffiti. They let members make policy without a hearing, without debate, without a standalone vote, hidden in a bill of a thousand pages. They make appropriations bills harder to pass, they encourage government shutdowns and they let a determined minority hold the nation hostage for the sake of one pet cause. If the policy is good, it should be passed in the open as its own law."

There is real force in that. Some riders are hidden, and the practice of stuffing everything into a single large package has done damage to the public's ability to see what Congress is doing. Conservatives have said so for years and should keep saying so.

But the answer is straightforward. First, a limitation rider is a less intrusive tool than most alternatives. It does not create a new program or a new bureaucracy. It simply withholds, and that is the more conservative instinct. Second, the right cure for hidden riders is the one conservatives have always advocated: smaller bills, single-subject spending measures, and enough time to read them. The solution to a lawmaking process that is too opaque is more transparency, not less power for the people who hold the purse. Third, riders are not hidden when they are voted on. They are printed, numbered and debated, and any member can read them.

The limits, when a president will veto

Now for the cold water, because a conservative case that overstates its power is just a pep rally. A limitation rider works only if it becomes law, and a bill becomes law only if the President signs it or two thirds of each House overrides his veto. Article I, Section 7 is plain on the point.

If a President strongly opposes a rider and is willing to veto the spending bill that carries it, then Congress has a choice between giving in and a shutdown. Presidents have not always been willing to go that far, because vetoing a spending bill risks being blamed for the closure. But some have, and when a President draws a line, the rider usually loses unless Congress holds a veto-proof majority, which it almost never does.

There are other limits. A rider only lasts as long as the bill, so it must be renewed every year. It cannot reach money that is permanently appropriated, which is why so much of the federal budget, including most entitlement programs, runs on autopilot and is beyond the reach of a yearly rider. And the executive branch may find ways to work around a restriction, which is why Congress must pair a rider with oversight to see that it is obeyed. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 sits on the other side of this ledger, restricting a President's ability to refuse to spend money Congress has appropriated, which tells you the fight over the purse runs in both directions.

For the broader picture of how a minority can bargain on must-pass legislation, read The Filibuster After the Midterm, Why Sixty Votes Now Protect the Outnumbered. For the executive side of the story, see Agencies Write Thousands of Rules a Year While Congress Passes Hundreds of Laws and Make Congress Vote on Every Major Rule, and Watch Accountability Return. To see how regulatory costs add up, the site's red tape page is worth a visit.

Why this is good news

Here is where I land, and I'll say it with a grin. The power to say no is the most underused power in Washington, and it is sitting in a drawer marked "Article I." Every year Congress passes spending bills that fund the very agencies whose rules we complain about, and every year most of the complaining happens after the money has been spent. If you want to know why the bureaucracy feels unaccountable, notice how seldom anybody asks it to account for itself at the moment it needs a check.

The answer is not despair. It is a spending bill, a few clear words, and a Congress that remembers it holds the keys. "None of the funds" is not a slogan. It is a power, and the Founders handed it to the branch closest to the people, on purpose.

The case in brief

1. Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 forbids any money from leaving the Treasury except through appropriations made by law, which makes the purse the strongest check Congress has.
2. A limitation rider, "none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to...", stops a policy without repealing a law, and in the Senate a minority can trade its votes on must-pass bills for riders.
3. Authorizing creates a program and appropriating pays for it; the House bars legislating in spending bills, except for the Holman Rule of 1876, which allows changes that cut spending.
4. Historic riders such as the Boland Amendments of the 1980s show the power and the danger of using it, and that the executive must obey it.
5. The tactic has limits: a President who will veto, permanent funding and the need to renew a rider every year.

What you can do: ask your representative and senators, in writing, which riders they have offered or voted for in the latest spending bills, and read the text of the bills at Congress.gov.