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President-elect Trump’s selection to lead the White House’s budget told lawmakers on Wednesday he may consider withholding funds appropriated by Congress and defended the removal of civil service protections for some employees as necessary to ensure good governance.
Russ Vought, Office of Management and Budget director-designate, drew criticism from both sides of the aisle for his refusal to confirm he would follow congressional spending laws when distributing funds to agencies, noting Trump has called existing restrictions unconstitutional and he would follow the president’s directives. Vought, who has taken an often adversarial approach with the federal civil service, suggested again the bureaucracy has been weaponized and that reforms were necessary to undo that reality.
Vought served as OMB’s deputy director from early in the first Trump administration and then took over as acting OMB head in January 2019. He was confirmed by the Senate for that post in July 2020. During his tenure, Vought repeatedly submitted budgets that would have gutted non-defense agencies and spearheaded efforts to remove civil service protections for much of the federal workforce.
Vought won broad support from Republicans on the committee and sweeping concern from Democrats in equal measure. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said at the top of the hearing that he supported Vought’s nomination and felt confident he would, in collaboration with the Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy-led, non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, slash federal spending.
“Mr. Vought has been a consistent advocate for fiscal sanity and has continually suggested strategies to decrease excess spending,” Paul said.
The former White House official played a key role in implementing Trump’s deregulatory agenda, including by removing agencies’ capacity to issue guidance without going through the formal rulemaking process. Vought also drew controversy when he oversaw the longest shutdown in U.S. history and took unprecedented action to keep agencies functioning despite the appropriations lapse, an approach that later drew rebuke from the Government Accountability Office. Toward the end of his tenure, Vought helped implement a Trump order to rid much of the federal government of diversity and inclusion efforts and threatened to discipline employees who participated in them.
Since leaving office, Vought has helped stand up the Center for Renewing America and has consistently railed against what he views as the outsized role of federal civil servants have in implementing law. He has bemoaned federal workers for dragging their feet in implementing Trump administration policy during the former president’s first term and has advocated for increased accountability to prevent that from occurring again. He frequently refers to federal workers as “the regime” and “the administrative state” and suggests they hold too much power.
Vought has been the lead advocate of whichever president took office in 2025 immediately reinstating Trump’s controversial Schedule F initiative.
The director-designate attempted to help implement Trump’s late executive order in 2020, which removed merit-based civil-service protections from large swaths of the federal workforce. The order was written to apply to any federal employee in a policymaking position, though Vought interpreted that language broadly.
While the clock ran out before Schedule F could take effect and President Biden immediately revoked it upon taking office, Vought sought to designate 88% of OMB as falling under Schedule F and eligible for politically based, at-will firings. In an interview with Tucker Carlson just before Trump announced his selection, Vought said he did that in part to set the tone for the rest of agency heads that “this should be viewed maximally.” He added that his understanding is Schedule F will be “a day one thing.”
At his hearing on Wednesday, Vought said he thought Schedule F was sound policy but suggested his conversations with Trump were private and he therefore could not disclose whether they have discussed restoring it. Still, he defended its necessity.
“It is to ensure that the president, who has policy-setting responsibility, has individuals who are also confidential, policy-making positions are responding to his views, his agenda,” Vought said. “And it works under the same basis that most Americans work on, which is they have to do a good job or they may not be in those positions for longer.”
He added after implementing the policy widely at OMB, he did not encounter anyone who should be fired using Schedule F authority.
In his interview with Carlson, Vought said in a second Trump term there “certainly is going to be mass layoffs and firings, particularly at some of the agencies that we don’t even think should exist.” Vought distanced himself from those comments when Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., asked about them.
“I’m not here to elaborate on plans to that effect because I’m not sure that they exist,” Vought said.
He added there are “weaponized bureaucracies across the federal government,” but that “doesn’t mean there’s not amazing career civil servants.”
Vought also said OMB would work with Musk and Ramaswamy’s team to ensure federal employees are reporting to their offices more frequently.
“I think we’re going to make it a priority,” Vought said, adding his team would “figure out where we are on a day-to-day granular basis, and then figure out what can be done about it.” He added it was a “concerning phenomena” that some agencies in recent months have signed collective bargaining agreements with federal employee unions protecting telework and pledged to examine those contracts carefully.
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., the top Democrat on the panel, said Vought’s experience at OMB disqualified him for the job.
“Unfortunately, your record and actions in these roles raise serious concerns about how you’re going to lead this critical agency that touches literally every single part of the federal government,” Peters said.
Peters focused on Trump’s promise to sidestep any efforts to block his agenda, in part by fighting to revoke the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. That law prohibits the executive branch from withholding congressionally appropriated funds for policy reasons. The Government Accountability Office in 2019 found OMB repeatedly violated the law by spending without appropriations during a shutdown earlier that year and in 2020 found it was again in violation by withholding aid to Ukraine. The latter event led, in part, to Trump’s first impeachment.
Vought denied that he ever violated the law during his first OMB tenure and said Trump was elected with the public knowing his stances in keeping the door open to again impounding funds.
“We’ll be developing our approach to this issue and strategy once his administration is in office,” Vought said.
Peters called the answer “very concerning” and said Trump’s election “doesn’t change the Constitution.” Paul similarly took issue with Vought’s answer, even as he suggested OMB maintained some leeway with transfer and reprogramming authority.
“I think if we appropriate something for a cause, that’s where it’s supposed to go, and that will still be my position,” Paul said.
After requests from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., and others to commit to allocating funds appropriated by Congress for programs such as Ukraine aid, veterans benefits and Great Lakes restoration, Vought declined to do so and said he would not get ahead of “the policy process.” Blumenthal called the responses “disqualifying,” which drew nods of approval from several committee Democrats.
Vought also made clear he hopes to once again put forward budgets that slash agency spending and reduce the federal workforce’s headcount, as the Trump administration proposed throughout the president-elect’s first term.
“Obviously, one of the things that our past budgets have really gone after is non-defense discretionary spending, which just so happens to be where the bureaucracy is funded on an annual basis,” Vought said, “which gives member senators the annual ability to go after some of that waste.”
Vought committed to seeing through Trump’s deregulatory agenda, noting he will define his tenure as successful if by the end of it agencies are eliminating regulations rather than “putting endless burdens on the American people.”
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