The rabid opposition he faced on the road to confirmation did not take Russell Vought by surprise. In November, he told popular commentator Tucker Carlson that Democrats would come hard after nominees they viewed as major threats to the Deep State.
On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) along party lines, 53 to 47. But it wasn’t easy.
Screeching and Gnashing of Teeth
The resistance Vought incurred included outbursts on the Senate floor and attempts to delay his confirmation vote by pulling an all-nighter in the Senate. Vought inspired screeching and gnashing of teeth from the likes of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who called him “dangerous.”
Warren cautioned fellow senators that Trump had named the lead architect of Project 2025 to oversee the federal government’s entire budget office. “He is putting the head writer of the plans that you had only read about in nightmares in a key government position,” she screeched. The one-time presidential candidate has been howling for weeks about Trump’s nominees. Her hypocritical ramblings have fallen on deaf GOP ears.
While Vought’s nomination hasn’t drawn the level of attention that Tulsi Gabbard’s, Kash Patel’s, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s have, Democrats had good reason to lose sleep over it. In a rare moment of accurate reporting, The New York Times dubbed Vought “one of the most powerful architects of President Trump’s agenda to upend the federal bureaucracy and slash spending that the administration thinks is wasteful.”
The Deep State
Vought believes the American people long ago lost control of their government to the Deep State. During his conversation with Carlson, he told an interesting story about a staffer who showed up to a meeting packed with bureaucrats and spent the entire time trying to figure out ways and reasons to disregard the president’s directions.
He also believes that for the last century, bureaucrats and other nonelected forces that make up the Deep State within a “fourth branch of government” essentially have been carrying out an agenda disconnected from the will of the American people and even the president. “They have essentially taken authority,” he said. When leftists say they want to preserve “democracy,” Vought added, what they really mean is they want to preserve the oligarchic Deep State.
The OMB
As he did during Trump’s first term, Vought will lead the OMB. And he has big plans to upend the Deep State.
The OMB is responsible for creating and carrying out the president’s budget. It also oversees and coordinates proposals and priorities aligned with the executive branch. In Vought’s own words, “OMB is the nerve center of the federal government, particularly the executive branch.”
It was Vought’s OMB during Trump’s first term that found a way to shift money from the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Defense to fund the border wall. Also, Trump used the OMB to cut off aid to Ukraine after it became clear the U.S. government had no idea where that money was going. Afterward, Trump was impeached. Coincidence?
Fortunately, as far as Vought sees it, there’s the OMB, “the president’s most important tool in dealing with the administrative state.” He’s determined to do what it takes, no matter how difficult it becomes. He sees himself as having what it takes to persevere in what promises to be a very intense battle centered on breaking loose the shackles of the Deep State:
What you need is people who are able to absorb political heat. They don’t have a fear of conflict, they can execute under withering enemy fire, they are up to speed, and they are no-nonsense in their own ability to know what must be done. They are unbelievably committed to the president and his agenda, and truly believe in their bones that they’re not there for their own agenda; they’re there for what President Trump was elected to do.
Traumatizing the Bureaucracy
The legacy media is aware of Vought’s doggedness. It has repeatedly brought attention to comments he made about wanting to “traumatize” the bureaucracy. Vought makes no apologies for those comments. He told Carlson:
Yeah, I called for trauma within the bureaucracies. The bureaucracies hate the American people. They want to put a 77-year-old, and did, Navy veteran in jail for building four ponds on his ranch to fight wildfires. That’s not the Department of Justice, that’s the EPA. [Every agency is] weaponized against the country. So, yeah, I would want to provide trauma against that bureaucracy in a way that frees the American people from the people [who] have assumed the type of power that the Constitution and no law … ever gave them.
Vought was referring to Montana Navy veteran Joe Robertson, who was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution through deductions from his Social Security checks for digging ponds on his own property. According to The Daily Signal, “The U.S. government prosecuted Robertson for digging in proximity to ‘navigable waters’ without a permit, a violation of the Clean Water Act administered by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.”
So what needs to happen to address this sort of insanity?
Impoundment
Among the scariest proposals Vought has floated is bringing back impoundment, or “the ability to not spend money.”
For 200 years, Vought says, Congress had the ability not to spend the entirety of congressional appropriations. That was the constitutional approach. Unfortunately, the approved appropriations have become a floor now. Vought said the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 eliminated impoundment, which destroyed the separation of powers when it comes to fiscal policy. The law essentially mandated the executive branch to spend every dollar they receive from Congress. Vought believes this is a major reason the nation’s economic condition is so out of control. Bringing back impoundment is also vital to taking back control of the bureaucracy.
Another major change necessary to break the Deep State, according to Vought, is making it easier for the president to fire federal employees. Restoring at-will employment for bureaucrats will remove the obstructionists who make up the Deep State’s foot soldiers. Trump has already made this item a priority. On his first day in office, between attending his inauguration and cutting cake with a sword at the Commander-in-Chief Ball, he signed the “Restoring Accountability to Policy-influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce” executive order.
After his confirmation, Vought gave a shout out to the real “Big Guy.” Then he signaled he’s ready to get to work.
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