Russell Vought is well-known on Capitol Hill and thus far at least looks like a shoo-in to be confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump’s budget director, as he was during Trump’s first term on a party-line vote in 2020.
The hard-charging Vought is a revered figure on the right with his pledges to upend the “deep state” and dismantle “woke and weaponized government,” including by refusing to spend all the money Congress appropriates.
He’ll need to be vetted again in the new year, where Democrats on the Senate Budget and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panels will be poring over Vought’s writings and speeches since leaving the Trump administration to found a new pro-Trump think tank, the Center for Renewing America.
Vought is also one of many contributors to the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, which Trump disavowed during his presidential campaign and is a major lightning rod on the left.
Since Trump’s Nov. 22 announcement that Vought was his choice to once again lead his Office of Management and Budget, a parade of conservative GOP senators have come out in support, such as Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
Incoming Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, is not among those openly praising Vought.
“I would not have anticipated that choice, because wasn’t he associated with the Heritage study that the president very much stepped away from? So, seems unusual to choose him,” Collins told reporters last month.
But Collins didn’t rule out supporting him either as she has twice before — in 2020 as well as in 2018, when he was confirmed as deputy OMB director on a tie-breaker vote by then-Vice President Mike Pence.
“I give deference to all presidents as they try to build their Cabinets,” Collins said. “But there are certain standards, and that’s why the advice and consent role of the Senate is so important.”
Collins’ Democratic counterpart on Appropriations, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, has made her opposition to Vought clear. She called him a “far-right ideologue” seeking to unlawfully expand executive spending powers, fire “tens of thousands” of federal workers and “gut programs that help working families” in a statement after Trump announced his selection.
‘Grinding halt’
If confirmed, Vought would play a key role in next year’s budget reconciliation and appropriations debates, as well as in a new set of negotiations to lift the debt limit. Senators are sure to scrutinize Vought’s past commentary, including his no-compromise approach to spending deals.
He’s called for shutting down the government rather than accepting a bipartisan stopgap funding bill the last two years, for instance. “The Biden regulatory agenda comes to a grinding halt with a government shutdown,” he posted on X in September 2023.
Vought called the 2023 debt ceiling and spending caps deal “terrible,” and backed Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, for speaker later that year. “The American people deserve a Speaker that represents them and not the DC Cartel,” Vought wrote.
After Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was elected and cut a deal to continue spending levels negotiated by Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Vought bashed “Mike Johnson’s spending deal” that Democrats were “celebrating.”
Here’s a look at what Vought has proposed, including as part of Project 2025 and in a budget blueprint he and his think tank drafted in 2022 that could become a template for Trump’s new budget due early next year.
Project 2025
Apportionments: Vought writes in Project 2025 of turning “apportionments” — the OMB’s controls over the flow of funds to ensure agencies don’t spend their appropriations too much, too fast — back over to political appointees known as program associate directors, rather than career officials known as deputy associate directors.
President Joe Biden put apportionments back into the hands of the career officials after Trump OMB officials signed off on the Ukraine aid holds that became the basis for Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019.
Vought and his team always held that the moves were lawful uses of apportionment authority, and further, they want to push the envelope of what constitutes an illegal “impoundment” of federal funds under a 1974 law. Trump has suggested that could involve vast clawbacks of previously signed spending laws.
“Administrative pay-as-you-go”: Vought wants to continue a temporary policy codified under the 2023 debt limit law requiring executive branch agencies to propose offsets for any spending increases that would occur through the rulemaking process.
The first Trump administration implemented the policy on its own, where Vought is said to have used it to discourage pricey rulemakings by the Department of Health and Human Services, for instance.
Republicans criticize the Biden administration for expanding food stamp benefits and student debt relief via regulatory actions and believe a tighter “administrative pay-as-you-go” policy would keep regulatory spending in check.
Regulatory rollback: In the OMB’s capacity as the final stop in the regulatory review process, Vought wants the agency to “develop a rigorous, data-driven approach that will result in the least burdensome rules possible.”
“Schedule F”: Vought has pledged to implement Trump’s “Schedule F” plan to eliminate civil service protections for the federal workforce so they could more easily fire staffers, replace them with more loyal partisans, or both.
And his agency will work hand in hand with the new, informal “Department of Government Efficiency” advisory group, with a stated goal of reducing the federal employee headcount through return-to-office mandates, building relocations and more.
“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 said in an interview last month with Tucker Carlson.
‘Fiscal brokenness’
Lost amid the focus on Trump’s other prospective nominees and Project 2025 is the detailed budget blueprint Vought and his team at the Center for Renewing America released in December 2022. It’s a clear rejection of traditional GOP orthodoxy calling for higher defense budgets and overhauling Social Security and Medicare, though it’s more aligned on tax policy.
But virtually every other entitlement and discretionary program would be on the cutting board, with a stated goal to “consciously and indelibly link the efforts of getting our nation’s finances in order with removing the scourge of woke and weaponized bureaucracy aimed at the American people,” Vought wrote.
The budget compares its proposed fiscal 2023 spending agency by agency to enacted spending in fiscal 2021, so its numbers are not up to date. Nevertheless, the scale of reductions gives a sense of the magnitude of changes Vought contemplates.
Here are some highlights of Vought’s budget plan, which he wrote in a preface would cure “America’s fiscal brokenness” by cutting trillions of dollars from federal spending.
Nondefense discretionary: The nondefense discretionary portion of the budget — which makes up about 17 percent of total spending outside of interest payments on the debt — would be cut by about $2.5 trillion over a decade, or 28 percent from baseline spending estimated at the time.
Vought makes no secret of his views on this budget category.
“When families decide to get on a budget, they do not target the largest and immovable items of their spending, like their mortgage, first. They aim to restrain discretionary spending — they eat out less, shop less, and find cheaper ways of entertaining themselves,” Vought writes. “Politically, a similar approach is the only way the American people will ever accept major changes to mandatory spending.”
The blueprint doesn’t outline all of the cuts over a decade, but in the first year of implementation, nearly every domestic agency would see double-digit appropriations cuts: a 54 percent reduction at the National Science Foundation, 45 percent to the State Department and foreign assistance, 43 percent at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 40 percent to the Labor Department and more.
Cuts would be more muted at NASA and the Justice Department, while the only nondefense agencies receiving discretionary increases are Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Transportation.
Defense: Vought writes of his distaste for the “defense-industrial complex,” and the Pentagon and national security-related programs at other agencies wouldn’t be spared. His budget proposes defense cuts totaling about $350 billion over 10 years, although the first few years would see slight increases in part to counter the rise of China.
He would downsize the “bloated overhead of the Pentagon, the general officer corps, the civilian workforce, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense,” and shift responsibility for Ukraine’s defense to a European-led effort.
Social Security, Medicare: As promised, Vought’s plan would not touch retiree benefits under Social Security and Medicare. But he would target disability insurance and Supplemental Security Income payments, both of which are overseen by the Social Security Administration, cutting those benefits by around $300 billion, or nearly 12 percent over a decade.
And it would slash about $1 trillion, or 7 percent, from Medicare payments to providers, which could cause them to limit access and pare back services, as well as through pharmaceutical price restraints opposed by many in Trump’s own party.
Medicaid, exchanges: The blueprint calls for slashing Medicaid, both traditional and the expanded subsidies provided under the 2010 health care law, by almost $2.2 trillion, or one-third. It would cut another $642 billion through repeal of the 2010 law’s exchange subsidies, which were expanded under the Biden administration, though the increases are set to expire next year.
Farm, nutrition programs: Just in time for a new multiyear farm bill after running out of room in this Congress, Vought’s budget proposed $633 billion in cuts to commodity supports and crop insurance program as well as nutrition assistance. Almost two-thirds of the cost savings would come from reductions in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps.
A small piece of the cost savings would come from charging new user fees to cover the cost of USDA meat, poultry and egg inspections.
Education: Over $266 billion in cuts to student loan subsidies and Pell Grants.
Taxes: Vought’s blueprint proposes extending for a decade the tax cuts enacted in 2017 under Trump that would otherwise expire next year, with an added bonus: full, immediate expensing of all capital investments and assets. The extensions would be partially paid for through repeal of energy-related tax credits.
The plan would keep in place the current $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions, unlike Vought’s boss who has called for some level of unwinding for the “SALT” cap. And it says nothing of Trump’s new campaign trail innovations like eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay.
The budget also assumes the tax cuts would pay for themselves through economic growth — an assumption that isn’t shared by nonpartisan budget scorekeepers and most mainstream economists.
David Lerman contributed to this report.
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