WASHINGTON — The Trump administration might have employed youngsters earlier this yr in a misguided effort to make the federal authorities extra environment friendly, nevertheless it’s 49-year-old Russ Vought who may actually have an opportunity to satisfy his adolescent desires.
That’s in accordance with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who mentioned this week that Vought, the director of the Workplace of Administration of Funds, is relishing the federal government shutdown that began Wednesday.
“Russ Vought, the OMB director, has been dreaming about this moment, preparing this moment, since puberty,” Lee advised Fox Information.
Within the lead-up to the shutdown that started Wednesday, conservative Republicans and Trump administration officers have been portraying Vought as an unstoppable boogeyman who is able to slash authorities relentlessly if the shutdown offers him an opportunity. However it’s removed from clear if the GOP has the political will to truly enact the cuts they’re threatening in an effort to acquire leverage in shutdown negotiations.
The Trump administration’s first spherical of cuts to the federal government earlier this yr, led by billionaire Elon Musk, ended when the political backlash — seen at rowdy city corridor conferences with Republican members and in an embarrassing defeat for Musk in one of many nation’s premier swing states — turned too nice. With public opinion surveys already exhibiting voters blaming Trump and the GOP for the shutdown, letting Vought go wild might simply blow up within the GOP’s face.
Up to now, Democrats have mentioned they’re not intimidated by Vought’s antics. Home minority chief Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) referred to as him “a malignant political hack” and mentioned he ought to “get lost.”
Vought is the mastermind behind the Trump administration’s efforts to maximise the president’s energy by seizing larger management over federal spending. Within the course of, he’s been stepping throughout Congress’ constitutional position in deciding federal spending ranges.
As soon as the shutdown began, Vought instantly moved to retaliate in opposition to Democrats, taking the lapse in appropriations as free rein to work the president’s will. He swiftly introduced a maintain on federal funding for main infrastructure initiatives in New York, dwelling to the highest two Democratic leaders within the Home and Senate, and adopted up with the cancellation of inexperienced vitality initiatives in a number of Democrat-led states.
“Russ Vought has a plan, and that plan is going to succeed in empowering — further empowering Trump,” Lee mentioned. “This is going to be the Democrats’ worst nightmare and it’s of their own making.”
The federal government shut down Wednesday after most Senate Democrats voted in opposition to a GOP invoice to maintain it funded. They mentioned the measure failed to handle well being care issues, specifically the looming expiration of insurance coverage premium subsidies for 22 million individuals. Democrats have additionally mentioned that Vought’s behavior of illegally impounding congressionally licensed spending — that’s, the White Home refusing to spend funds already appropriated by Congress — made it more durable for them to just accept the Republican-authored invoice.
“Is it helpful for Russ Vought to announce he’s freezing funding in New York in the middle of all this? No, it’s not helpful at all,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), one of many Democrats who voted for a Republican funding invoice in March, advised HuffPost this week. “It’s unfortunate that they’re engaged in that activity when all we’re trying to do is lower health care costs for people across the country.”
Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) claimed Thursday that Vought was not truly having a superb time.
“Whomever is seated in the chair at OMB during a shutdown has to do the same thing,” Johnson advised reporters. “He takes no pleasure in this, because Russ has to sit down and decide, because he’s in charge of that office, which policies, personnel and which programs are essential and which are not. That is not a fun task, and he is not enjoying that responsibility.”
Besides Vought will not be dealing with the shutdown the best way his predecessors did. No earlier administration ever threatened to fireside federal employees, as Vought has. As an alternative, they’ve usually furloughed individuals with out pay, and introduced them again when the federal government reopens. Vought has explicitly mentioned not solely does he need to fireplace individuals, he desires to make them sad.
Even some Republicans assume Vought’s gleeful assault on the forms is counterproductive, as it’d make Democrats much less prepared to chop a deal on reopening the federal government. Others mentioned Vought’s aggressiveness might hurt the GOP’s place in public opinion as a result of the ideologue is much less “politically in tune” than Trump.
“They need to be really careful with that, because they can create a toxic environment here,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) advised HuffPost. “So, hopefully, they’re working with the leader, and the leader with them, on not creating more work to get us out of this.”
Vought has by no means been shy about his desires of dismantling the federal government and turning it right into a bare-boned operational shell of itself. He was a key architect of Challenge 2025, the Heritage Basis’s conservative coverage blueprint for Trump’s second time period in workplace. Amongst different issues, the sweeping 920-page manifesto requires reducing as much as 1 million federal jobs and eliminating or privatizing varied federal companies.
Trump insisted throughout the 2024 presidential marketing campaign that he didn’t know something about Challenge 2025. On Thursday, Trump made mild of his previous denials with an enthusiastic publish about his plans to plot destruction with Vought.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump posted on Fact Social. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”
Vought, who additionally served as Trump’s OMB director in his first time period, spelled out in Challenge 2025 how he envisioned his emboldened position on this job in Trump’s second time period, making it clear he’s been wanting to wield extra energy than his predecessors.
“The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind,” Vought wrote. The OMB, he mentioned, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and ought to be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” turning into “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”
His disdain for federal staff is implicitly clear all through the insurance policies he advocates in Challenge 2025. However he’s mentioned it out loud, too, in personal speeches he gave in 2023 and 2024.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought mentioned in a single speech on the Middle for Renewing America. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the [Environmental Protection Agency] can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.”
“We want to put them in trauma,” he mentioned.
Throughout a July roundtable with reporters, Vought was visibly happy with the administration’s success so far in firing or forcing out tens of 1000’s of federal employees, and in imposing sweeping spending cuts throughout nearly each federal company. He hailed the success of a $9 billion rescissions bundle the White Home had not too long ago despatched to Congress — a proposal to cancel beforehand appropriated federal spending — and mentioned to count on extra such packages, along with potential impoundments.
“How many times do you have a good chance to think about a job that you did once and then to hit the ground running?” Vought requested. “We’re having fun.”
Requested how his job is “fun,” Vought smiled: “What’s not fun?”
Igor Bobic contributed reporting.
