Senators from both parties chided the Trump administration Thursday for continuing to withhold funding Congress has approved, more than a year after the White House first froze billions of dollars for temporary “review.”
During White House budget director Russ Vought’s testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) scolded the OMB chief for not sending hundreds of millions of dollars the Trump administration is supposed to give states throughout the year to support community services aimed at reducing poverty.
“Congress has appropriated money, and you don’t have the authority to impound it,” Grassley said about the more than $810 million Congress appropriated this year for the Community Services Block Grant program.
That program helps states fund anti-poverty services such as transportation, education and nutrition assistance that serve more than 9 million people each year.
Grassley told Vought that lawmakers “are not getting any answers” as to why the Trump administration hasn’t sent states their quarterly funding from the program. “I want those quarterly allotments released,” Grassley said.
While Vought did not directly address Grassley’s comments, he said at a different point during the hearing that “we have not impounded a single thing.”
Other senators, including Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), lamented federal dollars being withheld for the fund that provides capital to small banks and credit unions in underserved areas. For months lawmakers from both parties have pushed back against Trump’s plans to eliminate that program, the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.
