Cite as: 506 U. S. 80 (1992)
Opinion of Blackmun, J.
culty imagining how an "appropriation" of funds determined on appeal not to belong to the United States could ever be more specific.6
In part for that reason, however, I believe that a formal appropriation is not required in these circumstances. The Appropriations Clause governs only the disposition of money that belongs to the United States. The Clause "assure[s] that public funds will be spent according to the letter of the difficult judgments reached by Congress." Office of Personnel Management v. Richmond, 496 U. S. 414, 428 (1990) (emphasis added); see also Stith, Congress' Power of the Purse, 97 Yale L. J. 1343, 1358, and n. 67 (1988) (Clause encompasses only funds that belong to the United States); 2 Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1348 (3d ed. 1858) (object of the Clause "is to secure regularity, punctuality, and fidelity, in the disbursements of the public money" (emphasis added)). I do not believe that funds held
6 The Chief Justice, writing for the Court on this question, post, p. 93, would find an appropriation in the judgment fund, 31 U. S. C. § 1304. While plausible, his analysis is nevertheless problematic. The judgment fund is understood to apply to money judgments only. See, e. g., 58 Comp. Gen. 311 (1979). A final judgment in petitioner's favor, however, would be in the nature of a financial "acquittal"—a simple ruling that the res is not forfeitable. Unless we were to require the bank to sue on its judgment of nonforfeitability for return of a sum equivalent to the retained res, The Chief Justice's approach would seem to open the judgment fund to payment on nonmoney judgments. Moreover, as The Chief Justice acknowledges, see post, at 96, "the property subject to forfeiture in this case has been converted to proceeds now resting in the Assets Forfeiture Fund of the Treasury." Title 28 U. S. C. § 2465 can "be construed as authorizing the return of proceeds in such a case." Post, at 96. But a payment from the judgment fund would not achieve that purpose. The res is not in the judgment fund. A payment from that account, while no doubt entirely acceptable to petitioner, would not be a return of the forfeited property, and at the end of the episode (although I have no doubt that the Comptroller would manage to balance the books) the Assets Forfeiture Fund would be some $800,000 richer, and the judgment fund correspondingly diminished.
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