Understand that Congress Controls the “Power of the Purse.” As elected officials they are chartered to insure that the Executive Branch does spend more money than the people of this Nation can possibly provide for programs they do not support.
The Appropriations Clause is the cornerstone of Congress’s “power of the purse.” It assigns to Congress the role of final arbiter of the use of public funds. The source of Congress’s power to spend derives from Article I, Section 8, Clause 1. The Appropriations Clause provides Congress with a mechanism to control or to limit spending by the federal government. The Framers chose the particular language of limitation, not authorization, for the first part of the clause and placed it in Section 9 of Article I.