Democratic members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee offered up a combative reception today to Russell Vought – President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) – on a host of issues.
Those issues include his views on whether a president needs to obey the wishes of Congress in making expenditures approved by lawmakers, and his prior and perhaps future involvement in creating a “Schedule F” category for Federal employees in policy-making positions that would make them easier to fire.
During the committee’s pre-nomination hearing, Ranking Member Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., told Vought he has “serious questions about whether you can be trusted to carry out the laws that Congress has passed under the Constitution.”
In stating that view, Sen. Peters referred to Vought’s service as OMB director during the first Trump administration, and what he said were OMB decisions to block the disbursement of congressionally approved funding for disaster relief and other purposes.
“Above all, I’m concerned by actions you took to demonstrate a total disregard for following the laws that Congress has passed, particularly regarding on how to spend taxpayer dollars,” Sen. Peters said.
“The Constitution, as part of the key checks and balances of our democracy, gives Congress the responsibility to decide how Federal resources should be spent,” the senator said. “Federal Courts have consistently affirmed this is Congress’s role, and not” the role of the president.
“Yet during your time at OMB, you consistently ignored laws passed by Congress that directed how taxpayer dollars should be spent,” Sen. Peters asserted.
“You have previously served as both the director and deputy director of OMB,” the senator said. “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.”
On the Federal workforce policy front, Sen. Peters said he was “deeply concerned” by OMB’s work to implement an executive order by President Trump in 2020 to create the new Schedule F classification.
He said that action aimed to replace “nearly 50,000 nonpartisan career civil servants with appointees whose only qualification is that they’re politically loyal … not that they’re competent, not that they follow the law, they have to be politically loyal. That’s unacceptable.”
“This would have removed employees who have had years of knowledge and experience and posed a grave threat to our national security,” the senator said.
Responding to questions from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who raised similar concerns about the intentions of the incoming administration to distribute disaster aid approved by Congress, Vought said, “I’m not going to get ahead of the policy process of the incoming administration, but when it comes to responding to the disaster, the president has always been someone that cares deeply about these areas.”
As to whether administrations are legally required to distribute congressionally approved aid under the Impoundment Control Act, Sen. Blumenthal queried whether Vought believes that law to be constitutional. Vought replied that he did not and noted that President-elect Trump ran for office with that same view.
“The incoming administration is going to take the president’s view on this, as he stated in the campaign, work it through with the lawyers of the Department of Justice, some of whom are coming before Congress just today, if confirmed, and to put that through a policy process,” Vought said. “I can’t prejudge that policy process, and I certainly can’t announce the parameters of what it would produce.”
Asked by Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., whether he has discussed a new Schedule F push with President-elect Trump, Vought demurred.
“I don’t speak to the conversations that I have with the president, those are private deliberations, and I’m not here to announce anything,” Vought said.
Vought also denied that he has asked prospective new hires for the incoming Trump administration questions about who they voted for in the 2024 election. “I can only speak for myself senator, I haven’t asked those questions,” he said.
