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Russell Vought, who has helmed the White House’s Office of Management and Budget since January 2019 on an acting basis, will face Democratic opposition to being named to the post on a permanent basis.
At Vought’s Senate Budget Committee confirmation hearing Wednesday, two Democratic senators said outright they will oppose his nomination and others questioned his responses to their questions, particularly on whether he agreed with President Donald Trump’s threats to withhold federal dollars to states that make it easier to vote by mail.
As long as no Republicans on the panel express opposition, Vought’s path to the floor and eventual confirmation would still appear secure. But the rough questioning he took at the hands of Budget Committee Democrats may presage future political attacks against him that Republicans may feel obligated to answer.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who serves as the ranking minority member on the panel, said he will oppose Vought, as will Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who previously led the Budget Committee when Democrats held the Senate.
“Mr. Vought, if I might, let me be very blunt — given the enormity of this crisis and the failure of the Trump administration to respond to the unprecedented pain and suffering that the American people are now experiencing, I will be voting against your nomination,” Sanders said.
Murray quizzed Vought about his role in the temporary withholding of aid Congress had approved for Ukraine, the matter at the center of Democrats’ efforts in late 2019 and early 2020 to impeach and remove Trump from office. She also said the decision to not revise budget and economic forecasts in the upcoming summer budget update — a decision one budget group has said likely breaks the law — was “shameful.”
“I reviewed the record and I find Mr. Vought to be unfit and unqualified to lead the Office of Management and Budget, or any office,” Murray said. “To the chairman and my Republican colleagues, how is it we are having a hearing on a nominee who has shown he is unwilling or unable to stand up to this president, even when directed to break the law and who has continuously displayed such a willful disregard of Congress as a coequal branch of government?”
Vought, who doesn’t need support of Democrats to be confirmed, sought to dispel the sense he wouldn’t listen to Democrats.
“In terms of working with Congress, my door is always open and my phone is always on, senator, to build a closer relationship with you and members of this committee,” Vought said.
Vought took over as acting head of the OMB when its previous director, Mick Mulvaney, became Trump’s chief of staff, a post Mulvaney has since relinquished. Vought has served on Capitol Hill as policy director for the House Republican conference and executive director of the Republican Study Committee. Before joining the White House, Vought also worked at Heritage Action, the political arm of the non-profit conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
Vought said he has spent his entire career fighting for taxpayers. “I am grateful to the work of this administration that has made the eyes and the heart of the Forgotten Man, the lens from which we see policy,” he said.
“These men and women live and work in every city and every town in every state in this great country. I believe in their dreams and I believe that our government ought to let them pursue their dreams.”
Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, asked Vought if he had heeded Trump’s tweets in May about possibly withholding federal money to states that make it easier to vote by mail. Trump said that would prevent fraud, but most experts say mail-in ballot fraud is virtually non-existent.
“Did you take any action based on upon his public admonitions to you, in his tweets in late May?”
“Again, I’m aware of the tweets,” Vought said. Asked if he had taken action in response, Vought said, “I have not, sir.”
