Democratic senators voiced their frustration Wednesday with answers from Russell Vought, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to head up the White House’s budget office, about how he sees the limits of presidential power.
If confirmed, Vought would again head the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees spending by federal agencies and coordinates policies among the agencies.
“You do give really good bureaucratic answers, which is why people, I guess, are crazily frustrated with bureaucrats. You are a very good bureaucrat in not answering questions,” said Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, during Vought’s confirmation hearing.
Vought was OMB director in the last two years of the previous Trump administration but has become possibly more well-known since then as the architect behind Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation document meant to serve as a right-wing policy guide for the incoming administration.
The OMB, and Vought if he is confirmed, would be at the center of various potential fights the Trump administration may pick.
Trump has said he wants to challenge a 1974 law that forbids the administration from freezing money approved by Congress to be spent, so-called impoundment. OMB would also be crucial in potentially reclassifying a large portion of federal jobs to make them available for political appointees instead of career civil servants, an idea critics say would be a return to the 19th century political spoils system.
But Vought’s answers Wednesday appeared crafted to soothe those concerns, to the annoyance of several Democrats.
When Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) asked Vought if he would favor political appointees directly overseeing national intelligence and law enforcement agencies, Vought demurred, saying Trump has not stated a position on that.
When she followed up by asking if his interpretation of the law would hold sway in allocating money approved by Congress, Vought said he would follow the Constitution, but “the administration goes through a very extensive policy process.”
“You’re claiming to be an outsider that says you’re going to shake things up, but you’re giving the most wonky answers,” Slotkin replied, cutting him off.
When Peters pressed whether Vought, using impoundment, would “pick all the winners and losers who receive government funding,” Vought said he would not but declined to elaborate, saying he would not detail the parameters of the president’s power to withhold funds because “that requires a policy process by his incoming team.”
Peters called Vought’s answers “very troubling.”
Vought was clear on some subjects, though. He said he believed that the 1974 law forbidding impoundment was unconstitutional and that some government bureaucracies had been “weaponized,” citing the Department of Justice and the FBI in particular for “trying to take out their own president,” referring to Trump.
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Vought will have a second confirmation hearing on Jan. 22 before the Senate Budget Committee.