The Supreme Court upheld a funding scheme apparently meant to insulate a powerful federal agency from future congressional oversight.
The court ruled 7-2 that the funding scheme for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not violate the Constitution’s appropriations clause, which forbids the executive branch from taking money from the federal Treasury except “in consequence of appropriations made by law.”
“Under the appropriations clause, an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes,” Justice Clarence Thomas, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, wrote in the majority opinion. “The statute that provides the bureau’s funding meets these requirements. We therefore conclude that the Bureau’s funding mechanism does not violate the appropriations…
