If confirmed again as White House budget director, Russell Vought would likely do more than oversee spending, policy and regulations.
Vought, a co-author of Project 2025 who served as budget director in Donald Trump's first term, has signaled he will take a more aggressive approach to helping the president-elect carry out his agenda of shrinking the federal government.
A Senate committee questioned Vought this week on his previous tenure as director of the Office of Management and Budget, which included withholding military aid to Ukraine, an issue that led to Trump's first impeachment. The Government Accountability Office in 2020 concluded that OMB violated the law.
Vought declined to say whether he withhold aid to Ukraine in the future, The Associated Press reported.
“I’m not going to get ahead of the policy response of the incoming administration,” he said.
He said he would "always commit to upholding the law" but later noted Trump’s desire to overturn the 1974 Impoundment Control Act that requires congressional approval to rescind spending.
"No, I don’t believe it’s constitutional," Vought said. "The president ran on that view. That’s his view, and I agree with it."
“I am astonished and aghast that someone in this responsible of a position would in effect say that the president is above the law,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut.
Vought joined the first Trump administration as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and was confirmed as director in July 2020, according to the Trump White House website.
After Trump's defeat, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank. In speeches he made in 2023 and 2024, Vought described how he helped create legal justifications to prevent military leaders and government lawyers from obstructing Trump's executive actions, ProPublica reported.
Vought previously worked for groups including Heritage Action for America, which promises to "renew a consensus of America as a nation under God,” according to its website.
“Notwithstanding policy victories on tax policy, welfare, and the right to life in the last several decades, the conservative movement’s efforts had largely failed to turn back the tide of progressive liberalism,” the website said.
The policy opinions published on the website take aim at green energy provisions, and promote eliminating renewable subsidies as a way to reduct federal debt.
He "has reportedly crafted plans to defund the EPA and to deploy the military against protesters, and he has also claimed that the president can cut spending programs without Congress’ approval and should take more control over the Justice Department, an agency Trump routinely attempted to politicize during his first term," the government watchdog American Oversight said in a recent report.
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