WASHINGTON — The new White House budget director, Russ Vought, has spent much of his career learning the detailed, often complicated mechanisms that make up the Office of Management and Budget.
Little known outside of Washington DC, the agency is relatively diminutive compared to the rest of the federal government, but functions as the core of the executive branch and wields significant power.
The OMB is responsible for publishing the President’s budget request each year, but it also manages much of the executive branch by monitoring departmental performance, reviewing the enormous majority of federal regulations, and coordinating how the various agencies deal with the Communicate to Congress.
During Trump’s first term, Vought served as deputy director, acting director and then director at OMB.
Previously, Vought served as vice president of Heritage Action for America, political director of the U.S. House Republican Conference, executive director of the Republican Study Committee, and legislative assistant to former Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College and a degree in Law degree from George Washington University Law School.
After Trump’s first term, Vought founded the right-wing Center for Renewing America. The group’s mission is “to renew a consensus about America as a nation under God with unique, defensible interests arising from its people, institutions, and history, and in which the enjoyment of individual liberty is based on just laws and sound ones.” Communities based.”
Cutting government spending
Vought outlined its agenda for the next four years in Project 2025, a 922-page document document from the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, which led to speculation during the presidential campaign about what Trump would do without Congress, including in areas that constitutionally fall under the legislative branch, such as government spending.
Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly tried to link the 2025 project to Trump and his campaign, and she tried to distance herself from his proposals. But Trump has since nominated some of his authors or contributors to lead federal departments and agencies.
Vought wrote in a 26-page chapter on the executive office of the president that the OMB director “must ensure the appointment of a general counsel who is respected, yet creative and fearless in his ability to challenge legal precedents that undermine the protection of the state.” serve.”Status Quo.”
Trump, Vought and many others are bullish about cutting government spending but will likely face legal challenges if they try to spend more or significantly less than lawmakers approve in the dozen annual government funding bills.
Budget request
One of Vought’s most evident tasks will be the release of the president’s annual budget request, a comprehensive document that lays out the commander in chief’s proposal for the federal government’s tax and spending policies.
However, the president’s budget is just a request because Congress has the constitutional power to set tax and spending policy.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill author a dozen annual federal funding bills that account for about a third of annual federal spending. The rest of the federal government’s spending comes from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are classified as mandatory programs and run largely on autopilot unless Congress approves changes and the president approves new law.
This separation of powers led to frustration during Trump’s first term and is likely to continue to do so, as he spoke during the 2024 campaign of using “seizure” to stop the federal government from spending funds approved by Congress.
During his first term, Trump withheld security aid funds from Ukraine, leading to one of his two impeachment trials and a ruling by the Government Accountability Office – a nonpartisan government watchdog – that he had broken the law.
“Faithful implementation of the law does not allow the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those enacted by Congress,” the GAO said wrote. “OMB withheld funds for political reasons, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The reluctance was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”
Trump spoke on the campaign trail of using “seizure” to drastically cut government spending, but that would likely lead to lawsuits and a Supreme Court ruling.
Vought’s think tank, Center for Renewing America, published analysis of presidents who have used impoundments throughout the country’s history, with the authors concluding that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional.
“Every possible tool”
Vought attempted to defend the President’s budget request in his chapter in Project 2025, writing, “Although some may mistakenly view it as a mere paper-pushing exercise, the President’s budget is actually an effective mechanism for setting and enforcing public policy in federal agencies.” ”
He signaled that the second Trump administration would interpret the president’s authority in a more nuanced way.
“The President should use every possible tool to propose and enforce fiscal discipline on the federal government,” Vought wrote. “Anything else would be a complete failure.”
Vought also wrote about the management aspect of the OMB portfolio, urging that political appointees have more authority and influence than career employees.
“It is critical that the director and his political staff, not the careerists, lead these offices in pursuing the president’s real priorities and not allow them to set their own agenda based on the wishes of the sprawling ‘good government’ management community “Set within and without the government,” Vought wrote. “Many directors fail to properly prioritize the management portfolio, leaving it to the deputy for management, but such neglect leads to pointless bureaucracy that hinders a president’s agenda – an ‘M train to nowhere.'”
Last updated on November 26, 2024 at 3:12 p.m
