Statement from Center for Progressive Reform Policy Director James Goodwin on President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Russell Vought to serve as Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A defining characteristic of the modern presidency is the growing centralization of control over the administrative state within the office of the presidency. Conservatives, of course, have decried this trend when someone from the ideological opposition occupies the Oval Office, all while conveniently ignoring that it was they who initiated it and later accelerated it when it served their own ideological agenda.
Project 2025 is the apotheosis of this trend — demanding a frightening, unprecedented consolidation of power within the hands of a president who has made no secret of his autocratic pretensions. Conservatives, to no one’s surprise, now cheer this development.
To exercise this control, the president has increasingly relied on the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and, as a result, this office has seen its power grow exponentially in recent decades. So it is with Project 2025, which singles out OMB for a key role in translating its dream of an authoritarian presidency into America’s nightmare.
It was Vought who wrote the chapter on OMB for Project 2025. It was Vought who articulated its vision of an authoritarian president most clearly, ominously writing, “The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power — including power currently held by the executive branch — to the American people.”
Vought unapologetically subscribes to troubling views on democracy and Christian nationalism. So, it is worrisome to contemplate which “powers” he thinks should be returned and to which “American people.” More to the point, I’m not sure we can count on a president that has arrogated to himself such “vast powers” to voluntarily relinquish them.
What I am sure of, though, is this: Every second that Vought spends as OMB Director, the future of U.S. democracy would be in danger. The rights of hundreds of millions of Americans would be at unacceptable risk. The widely shared values that have sustained us as a country for over 200 years would be debased.
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