For the next three weeks, Donald Trump has even more power to use the intelligence community to go after his enemies. A provision slipped in to the continuing resolution that keeps government open until Feb. 8, reportedly at the behest of Mick Mulvaney's Office of Management and Budget, lets Trump allocate funding to whatever programs he wants, even if they haven't been authorized by Congress, or if Congress hasn't even been notified about them.
Because this happened on the House side, and because no one in Congress is paying attention to anything, senators were blindsided by it—even Republicans. North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, who seems to actually be taking his role as chair of the Intelligence Committee seriously, is not a happy camper.
“This language could erode the powers of the authorizing committee. Effectively, the intelligence community could expend funds as it sees fit,” said Burr, the chairman of the intelligence committee which is running a high-profile investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Said Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and the ranking member of the minority party on the committee: “We just want to make sure that we don’t give a blank check to any administration, particularly this administration. We need to get it fixed.”
Burr attempted to remove the language on the Senate floor, but his move required unanimous consent, and fellow Republican Thad Cochran – the chairman of the appropriations committee – objected, ending the effort.
“It should have never been in there, but this seems to be a fight between appropriators and authorizers in the House,” Burr said, referring to appropriations committee members and intelligence committee members.
When Warner says "particularly this administration," he's talking about Trump's tendency to use every legal and illegal tool at hand to punish his enemies.
Consider this: "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained or deported several prominent immigrant activists across the country, prompting accusations from advocates that the Trump administration is improperly targeting political opponents."
In the next three weeks we are relying solely on the principles and the professionalism of the intelligence community to keep their tools out of Trump's grubby, stubby hands. This comes after the Congress already expanded his warrantless surveillance authority, something that Burr and Warner should have been as alarmed about as this new problem.
It puts even more of the onus on them to make sure that it doesn't happen again—that the provision is stripped from the next funding bill, or they don't let it pass.