As members of Congress and staff dig into President Biden’s 2023 budget request, they have a new tool for tracking when, where, and how the president is authorizing federal agencies to spend money — but Congress, and the public, needs to know this new tool exists. It comes in the form of apportionment transparency, an instrument designed to reinforce Congress’s power of the purse.
In Federalist No. 58, James Madison described the power of the purse — or the legislature’s autho...