Tomorrow, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC, pronounced “hiss-gak” if you want to impress your friends) will take up the nomination of Russell Vought to be president-elect Donald Trump’s Director of the Office of Management Budget (OMB). Vought’s nomination lacks the potential fireworks of Pete Hegseth (Secretary of the Department of Defense), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services), or Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence), but his confirmation hearing will arguably be the most important of all Trump’s nominees. And there’s a lot of important issues to watch for.
What sets Vought’s confirmation hearing apart from the others? Properly understood, it comes about as close as you can to having a confirmation hearing for the entire Trump administration. This is in part a reflection of the significance of OMB in the modern presidency. That agency is responsible for assembling the administration’s budget proposal each year. But, even with Republican control of both chambers of Congress, Capitol Hill reporters will soon be singing the common refrain that the budget proposal is “dead on arrival.”
More significant, though, is the “M” in OMB. Early in his administration, President Ronald Reagan kicked off an escalating battle with Congress over control of executive branch agencies, with OMB serving as his top general. Ever since, presidents of both parties have leaned heavily on OMB, and a sub-department there called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), to superintend the day-to-day activities of agencies to ensure their alignment with the president’s priorities, preferences, and political concerns.
It’s fair to say that Trump is not a policy guy, which gives his OMB Director even greater authority. Vought himself recognized this in the chapter on OMB he penned for Project 2025, the radical conservative policy agenda assembled under the direction of the Heritage Foundation. There, he described the OMB Director’s role as the “President’s air-traffic control system with the ability and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and, at times, ground planes that are flying off course.”
In short, while Trump is off running his mouth on social media, hobnobbing with foreign dictators, or merely golfing, Vought will be doing most of what ordinary folks think of as the “president’s job.”
Because of all this, members of Senate HSGAC from both parties should take this hearing very seriously. If they do, I expect they will delve into the following topics:
- Imperial presidency and Project 2025. Project 2025, in essence, is about building an imperial presidency capable of imposing a Christian nationalist agenda. Vought made this clear in writing what amounts to Project 2025’s thesis: “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.” Left unsaid is which “powers” will be returned and to which “American people.” Vought also glosses over what recourse might be available to the American people and their elected representatives in Congress if the president fails to return those “vast powers.” The confirmation hearing offers a great opportunity to get Vought on the record regarding these critical matters.
- Impoundment. When Congress appropriates money, those directions to the executive branch set a ceiling and a floor: The president and his agents have no independent discretion to spend more or less. Vought rejects the Constitution on this and supports what is referred to as “impoundment,” or the power of the president not to spend money that Congress has appropriated. During his first term, Trump got into a lot of trouble when he sought to withhold aid to Ukraine. Vought played a starring role in that episode. Vought has argued in favor of a president’s impoundment authorities, even making the case that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional. During the hearing, Congress needs to step up and defend its constitutional role against this and other impingements.
- Civil service. That our constitutional system of government has been able to adapt and meet the evolving challenges of a modernizing world and shifting demands of the American public owes in no small part to our professional civil service. For conservatives like Vought, though, attacking the civil service has become central to their broader conservative mission of shrinking government to benefit wealthy elites. The introduction of Schedule F to convert tens of thousands of public servants into at-will employees during Trump’s first term represented the greatest threat yet to the civil service. Again, Vought’s fingerprints were all over its implementation at the time, and he has been a vocal advocate of reinstating the policy under a future conservative administration. Worse still, Vought has sunk to personal attacks against public servants, stating in a speech that he wanted to put them “in trauma.” Senate HSGAC members should stand up for basic decency in the treatment of these individuals. If they’re smart, they’d also recognize that the civil service works for them and their constituents. So, they should demand that Vought explain how he will ensure that the civil service will fulfill its pledge to uphold the law and continue providing expert service to the American public.
- DOGE. According to recent press accounts, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will be institutionally housed at OMB. This raises all kinds of legal red flags since it creates the appearance, if not the reality, that people who lack formal accountability mechanisms and any legitimate claim to policymaking authority will be influencing the work of the administration. That Musk and Ramaswamy are awash in conflicts of interest makes matters even worse. The members of HSGAC should conduct proper oversight of DOGE’s work consistent with their constitutional duties. They also should grill Vought on how he intends to ensure that DOGE complies with both the letter and spirit of various laws meant to prevent corruption and promote executive branch accountability.
