FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
PRESS CONTACT:
Nicole Haley, nicole@congressionalintegrity.org
Washington, D.C. – Today, Russell Vought had his first confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. During the hearing, he repeatedly dodged questions on impoundments, challenged Supreme Court precedent that impoundment is unconstitutional, and defended his attempts to impound spending during the first Trump administration. In response, Congressional Integrity Project Senior Advisor Kyle Herrig issued the following statement:
“Russell Vought is a long-time Trump lackey who has extensively written and spoken about his radical and unconstitutional view of the President’s powers to ignore spending laws passed by Congress. And today, he refused to acknowledge Congress’s constitutionally afforded power of the purse and allowed the possibility that President-elect Trump would again ignore spending laws passed by Congress – including funding provided to prevent opioid overdoses – jeopardizing future agreements to fund the government and threatening future government shutdowns. The Senate must reject Vought for his refusal to accept our Constitutional system of checks and balances – and ensure that President-elect Trump respects Congressional laws as enacted. ”
Impoundment is illegal and unconstitutional, and its use would threaten our system of checks and balances.
- Impoundment occurs when the president declines to spend money Congress has appropriated and enacted into law.
- This practice has always been unconstitutional, a fact supported by the Supreme Court, Department of Justice, and the Government Accountability Office. In 1974, impoundment was further clarified with the Impoundment Control Act, which created the process a president must follow to delay or cancel funding — only with Congress’s approval.
- The law was passed in response to abuses of impoundment by Richard Nixon, who used it to refuse to spend funds Congress allocated to clean sewage out of municipal water systems. In his first term, Trump unsuccessfully tried to use impoundment to deny aid funds to Ukraine, leading to his first impeachment.
Russ Vought is a leading proponent of impoundment.
- Vought advocated for impoundment while serving as the OMB director at the end of Trump’s first term, saying in a letter that the Impoundment Control Act “is unworkable in practice and should be significantly reformed or repealed.”
- This letter came after Trump’s OMB violated the law and used impoundment to withhold aid from Ukraine while Vought was deputy director.
- After leaving the Trump administration, Vought founded a think tank that, together with Project 2025, creates the roadmap for deploying impoundments to ignore Congressional laws without a vote.
- Vought’s think tank has encouraged $2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, more than $600 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act.
At the OMB, Vought would lead Trump’s effort to ignore spending laws passed by Congress and usurp Congress’s power of the purse.
- Trump made the power of impoundment a priority in his agenda.
- His nomination of impoundment champion Russ Vought in a crucial role that directly impacts how the executive branch uses power is a clear step towards that goal.
- Vought served in leadership the last time Trump’s OMB helped him illegally use impoundment for his political agenda.
- Vought himself wrote a chapter in Project 2025 outlining how OMB could help a president amass unchecked executive power.
Bottom Line: Confirming Russ Vought as OMB director would be a dangerous step forward in Trump’s plan to seize power from Congress and override Congress’s constitutional spending authority.