Public Money

Clause 7. Appropriations and Accounting of Public Money

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

Payment of Claims and Public Money

No officer of the Federal Government is authorized to pay a debt due from the United States, whether reduced to judgment or not, without an appropriation for that purpose.1 Nor may a government employee, by erroneous advice to a claimant, bind the United States through equitable estoppel principles to pay a claim for which an appropriation has not been made.2

More about Payment of Claims

After the Civil War, a number of controversies arose out of attempts by Congress to restrict the payment of the claims of persons who had aided the Rebellion but had thereafter received a pardon from the President. The Supreme Court held that Congress could not prescribe the evidentiary effect of a pardon in a proceeding in the Court of Claims for property confiscated during the Civil War,3 but that where the confiscated property had been sold and the proceeds paid into the Treasury, a pardon did not of its own force authorize the restoration of such proceeds.4 It was within the competence of Congress to declare that the amount due to persons thus pardoned should not be paid out of the Treasury and that no general appropriation should extend to their claims.5

Resources

References

This text about Public Money is based on “The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation”, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

[Footnote 1] Reeside v. Walker, 52 U.S. (11 How.) 272 (1851).

[Footnote 2] OPM v. Richmond, 496 U.S. 414 (1990).

[Footnote 3] United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128 (1872).

[Footnote 4] Knote v. United States, 95 U.S. 149, 154 (1877); Austin v. United States, 155 U.S. 417, 427 (1894).

[Footnote 5] Hart v. United States, 118 U.S. 62, 67 (1886).

Tables of Contents

• Public Money and other Topics in the Contents – Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution
• U.S. Constitutional Law Category
• List of amendments to the U.S. Constitution
• Public Money and other Topics in the Constitution Contents
• Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution (Table of Contents)
• Clauses of the Constitution (Table of Contents)