There’s been a lack of trust lately between the Capitol and the White House. On one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought has claimed sweeping authority to withhold money from projects that go against President Donald Trump’s policies. But just over a mile away in the halls of Congress, lawmakers, even Republicans, are finally growing tired of Vought’s incessant incursions into their power of the purse.
Since returning to the head of OMB last year, Vought has used every lever he can reach to staunch the flow of federal dollars.
Since returning to OMB to lead it last year, Vought has used every lever he can reach to stanch the flow of federal dollars. While Elon Musk was the face of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, it was Vought’s OMB that implemented the unilateral spending cuts and mass firings DOGE recommended. He has argued in favor of the president impounding money that Congress has appropriated, despite a law specifically forbidding the practice, and proposed truly draconian spending cuts during his time in and out of office.
Vought has reluctantly involved Congress in his crusade — but only when his hand has been forced. After an outcry from lawmakers about DOGE’s rampant spending cuts last summer, OMB sent a list of rescissions, which act as an “undo” button for money that hasn’t been spent, for them to approve. Congressional Republicans signed off on a package cutting $8 billion in foreign aid funding and roughly $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But that wasn’t enough for Vought, who last fall enacted a “pocket rescission” to cut another $4.9 billion in foreign aid. By only informing Congress of the hold less than 45 days before the end of the fiscal year, OMB argued, the money would be cut automatically.
Since then, Vought has been busy finding new ways to circumvent Congress. He has used the “apportionment” process to force federal spending to match up with Trump’s rejected budget proposals. His office has also been instrumental in withholding and canceling funding for projects in Democratic-controlled states. Even more troubling, a new federal rule currently in the works would give his office unprecedented control over issuing federal grants. If enacted, the rule would effectively serve as a roundabout veto over spending that fails to “demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities,” even those that meet the specific guidelines Congress has put in place.
These shenanigans have grown increasingly less well received with legislators as time has passed. “Congress has appropriated money, and you don’t have the authority to impound it,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told the OMB director during a Senate Budget Committee hearing this spring. Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, a senior GOP appropriator, was much blunter in a recent interview with Politico about Vought pulling the same trick this year: “Pocket rescissions would be a very interesting way to curry favor with the legislative branch — especially the one part of the legislative branch which has delivered on all of the administration’s s–––.”
Vought’s shenanigans have grown increasingly less well received with legislators as time has passed.
Before leaving town for the August recess, the Senate passed a short-term funding bill meant to keep the federal government open and running until December. Included in the stopgap bill’s text is a temporary halt to Vought’s takeover of federal grants. The House still must pass the bill when its members return to Washington — but the odds are looking good that it will reach Trump’s desk to avert a shutdown before the midterm elections.
It’s a very welcome, if belated development from a body that has been content to see its prerogatives siphoned away over the years. Congress has seen fit to let its constitutional authority over war, trade and other key functions slip further into the executive branch’s domain, as its own functionality has dwindled. But the constant rejection of the most extreme White House budget cuts throughout both Trump administrations convinced Vought that it was necessary to take matters into his own hands. Thankfully, it appears this is one area where the legislative branch seems determined to uphold its supremacy.
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