<P> In colonial Canada, the fight for "responsible government" in the 1840s centered on question of whether elected parliaments or appointed governors would have control over the purse strings, mirroring earlier fights between Parliament and the Crown in Britain . </P> <P> After confederation, the phrase "power of the purse" took on a particular meaning . It now primarily refers to the federal government's superior tax - raising abilities compared to the provinces, and the consequent ability of the federal government to compel provincial governments to adopt certain policies in exchange for transfer payments . Most famously, the Canada Health Act sets rules that provinces adhere to receive health transfers (the largest such transfers). Opponents of this arrangement refer to this situation as the "fiscal imbalance", while others argue for the federal government's role in setting minimum standards for social programs in Canada . </P> <P> The power of the purse's earliest examples in a modern sense occurred in the English Parliament, which gained the exclusive power to authorise taxes and thus could control the nation's cash flow . Through this power, Parliament slowly subverted the executive strength of the crown; King Charles II was limited in his powers to engage in various war efforts by a refusal by Parliament to authorise further taxes and by his inability to secure loans from foreign nations, making him much less powerful . </P> <P> In recent years as a result of devolution, funding for devolved issues to the Scottish Parliament as well as the Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies has been determined through the Barnett Formula . This formula determines the overall budget of the devolved parliaments for devolved issues proportionally relative to spending on those issues in England . As a result, while responsibility for funding of devolved matters rests with the devolved bodies themselves, they in effect must enact policies of a broadly similar cost to those decided by the UK parliament for England and maintain that broad proportionality in order to ensure the long term financial viability of such policies . </P>

When has congress used the power of the purse