WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday confirmed Russell Vought to head the powerful Office of Management and Budget, maneuvering an official who has plotted the massive expansion of President Donald Trump’s power into one of the most influential positions in the government.
Vought, the architect of the controversial right-wing playbook Project 2025, was confirmed on a party-line vote of 53-47. With the Senate chamber full, Democrats repeatedly tried to speak as they cast their “no” votes to give their reasons for voting against Vought. But they were relentlessly gaveled into silence.
The vote came after Democrats had exhausted their only remaining tool to stonewall a nomination – holding the Senate floor throughout the previous night and day with a series of speeches in which they warned that Vought was Trump’s “most dangerous nominee.”
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in a floor speech attacked the move as “confirming the most radical nominee, who has the most extreme agenda, to [head] the most important agency in Washington.” He called it a “triple-header of disaster for hardworking Americans.”
Vought’s return to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which he also helmed during Trump’s first term, hands him key power in implementing the president’s goals. The OMB acts as a powerful nerve center for the White House, developing its budget, policy priorities and agency rule-making.
Vought has already played an influential role in Trump’s aim to overhaul the federal government, guided by the Project 2025 bible he helped create. Throughout his campaign Trump claimed he knew nothing about Project 2025. At one point he said: “I don’t know what the hell that is.”
Yet now, there are at least 37 examples of language in his executive orders pulled directly from the right-wing playbook.
The budget office now officially helmed by Vought is already shaking up federal spending. It had issued a memo to freeze federal spending, sending schools, states and nonprofits into a panic before it was blocked by judges.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune pushed for his confirmation this week, saying Vought “will have the chance to address two key economic issues — cutting burdensome government regulations and addressing excessive spending.”
Vought often counseled congressional Republicans to wage win-at-all-costs fights to cut federal programs and spending. Writing in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 statement, Vought described the White House budget director’s job as the “best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind.”
The OMB, he declared, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”
During Trump’s first term, Vought pushed to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which could then enable mass dismissals. Vought has also been a proponent of the president using “impoundment” of funds to expand the executive branch’s control over federal spending.
During confirmation hearings, Vought stressed that he would follow the law but avoided answering Democrats’ questions on whether he would withhold congressionally allotted aid for Ukraine.
Democrats charged that Vought’s responses amounted to an acknowledgment that he believes the president is above the law.
Vought has also unabashedly advanced “ Christian nationalism,” an idea rising in the GOP that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and the government should now be infused with Christianity.
