Russ Vought's nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget advanced from the Senate Budget Committee Thursday on an 11-0 vote after Democrats boycotted the vote.
The 11-0 party-line vote clears the way for Vought’s nomination to go to the full Senate. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which shares jurisdiction over the Office of Management and Budget, approved Vought’s selection in a party-line vote last week.
Thanks to Democrats’ boycott, Republicans had to wait for all 11 GOP panel members to trickle in from their other obligations due to rules requiring a quorum of committee members before taking a vote.
“They’re not here. They chose not to be here. It’s their right not to be here,” Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said of the committee’s Democrats.
Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., the ranking Democrat on the committee, announced ahead of the vote that he and other Democrats would skip the markup and instead hold a press conference to protest the Vought nomination, where they were joined by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.
They said Vought was “dangerously unfit” for the job given his record promoting efforts to block federal spending on initiatives the Trump administration disagrees with, even after Congress approved the funds.
Since Vought is not currently an OMB official, he is not directly responsible for the funding freeze memo that caught much of Washington by surprise this week. But he’s regarded as an architect of such policies after serving as OMB director in the first Trump administration and maintaining close ties to Trumpworld during the campaign and transition.
The boycott was brought on by Trump's order freezing a large part of the federal government's discretionary spending; see Democrats Lose Their Minds Over Trump's Funding Freeze, Then Flat-Out Lie About Its Impact – RedState. Committee Democrats demanded that Lindsey Graham hold up Vought's nomination until Trump agreed to stop doing what he was elected to do.
Vought was OMB director in Trump 1.0; he is a master of bureaucratic warfare and the federal budget. He can't be intimidated. He's also one of the leading lights of Project 2025, which seems to be happening despite Trump never having heard of it. He also will not put up with "resistance."
The last time Russ Vought ran the Office of Management and Budget was 2020.
— Nick Schwellenbach (@schwellenbach) January 23, 2025
A very low number* - 40% - of OMB staffers that year who responded to a federal survey said they could blow the whistle "without fear of reprisal." That number doubled after Vought left. pic.twitter.com/pumMC1IlIY
RELATED:
Trump Reveals 'Aggressive Cost Cutter' to Hold OMB Position – RedState
Already, the bureaucracy is filled with dread of the shakeup they see coming:
Only days into his second term, Trump’s extraordinary steps have challenged a fundamental principle of the Constitution: control over the power of the purse, which the president has looked to partly wrest away from lawmakers so that he can shape the federal budget as he wishes.
Already, Trump’s actions have triggered significant legal clashes. In one case, lawyers with the Justice Department on Thursday defended Trump’s ability to “lawfully direct agencies to implement the president’s agenda,” describing a pause in the disbursement of federal funds as “commonplace.”
Separately, infuriated Democrats tried Thursday to block Trump’s selection to lead the White House budget office — Russell Vought — from proceeding to a full Senate confirmation vote. Vought, who has embraced Trump’s aggressive strategy, overcame a brief uprising after Republicans voted to advance his nomination out of committee, foreshadowing the high-stakes budget battles still to come.
Vought is now on the way to confirmation next week. When he arrives at OMB, things will really start to happen.
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