The Senate confirmed Russell Vought to return as head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) after having helmed the agency during the latter half of President Trump’s first term.
All 53 Republicans backed Vought as OMB director, while every Democrat (47) opposed Trump’s nominee.
“Mr. Vought will have the chance to address two key economic issues — cutting burdensome government regulations and addressing excessive spending,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) in a floor speech Wednesday. “And the history of the past four years under the Biden administration is a history of burdensome new regulations.”
“Our country is currently on a dangerous spending track, with debt held by the public set to hit a staggering $52 trillion by 2035,” Thune added. “And identifying ways to rein in our spending – and to target government waste – has to be a priority. And I’m confident that Mr. Vought will help lead that charge.
Vought will now serve at what he has called “the nerve center” of the second Trump administration’s budgetary and rule-making priorities.
He was elevated from the role of OMB deputy director to director during the first Trump administration after Mick Mulvaney departed the agency to serve as White House chief-of-staff.
After leaving office, Vought briefly advised the hardline Freedom Caucus in 2023, as its members fought against House Republican leadership for deeper federal spending cuts during the Biden administration.
When announcing his OMB pick last November, Trump posted on his Truth Social account: “He did an excellent job serving in this role in my First Term – We cut four Regulations for every new Regulation, and it was a Great Success!”
Senate Democrats have railed against him as the architect behind a government-wide loan and grant freeze as well as a conservative blueprint for the presidency known as “Project 2025.”
Vought distanced himself from the book during his confirmation hearing, but Democrats still wielded it and other past statements against the nom in a 30-hour filibuster stretching from Wednesday into Thursday.
Back in August, several Dem pols had also toted around copies of the project’s 922-page policy tome at their party’s convention in Chicago, denouncing what they saw as its regressive policies on the federal workforce, abortion and benefit programs like Medicare.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump frequently said he had “nothing to do” with the policies contained in the doorstopper put out by the Heritage Foundation think tank.
Vought has also caught flak for his views on collective bargaining agreements with federal employees, executive branch impoundment, the effects of Trump’s signature tax legislation in 2017 and his views on 2020 election fraud.
In 1974, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act, which forces US presidents to follow through on spending items approved by the legislative branch.
“The president ran on the notion that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional,” Vought told senators in his confirmation hearing earlier this month. “I agree with that.”
Some federal courts have already blocked Trump’s freeze on the loans and grants, but the move remains popular among some conservative Republicans.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), for example, introduced legislation last Congress to repeal the Impoundment Control Act, arguing that it put “unconstitutional limitations” on the executive branch that “contributed to a fiscal crisis” with the nation’s spending outpacing revenues for more than two decades.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others have accused Trump, 78, of running afoul of the law by freezing some funds already authorized by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
On Thursday, Schumer denounced Vought before the vote as a “hard-right” nominee whose “goal is simply to cut everything almost without regard to how important these programs are so that he can cut taxes on very wealthy people.”
Republicans have countered that the tax cuts benefitted Americans of all income brackets.
In a questionnaire submitted to senators, Vought had also stated: “I believe that the 2020 election was rigged.”
Vought first served as OMB head from Jan. 2, 2019 to January 20, 2021, leaving the administration to found the Center for Renewing America, a think tank aligned with the 45th president’s “America First” agenda.
