WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s budget chief suggested Thursday that he doesn’t need Congress or the Constitution to force through massive cuts to federal spending, hinting that more such cuts are coming soon as Trump demonstrates he’s “not cowing to a legislative branch’s understanding of its own authorities and powers.”
Russ Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, also called for more partisanship on Capitol Hill on spending matters and said he’d only work with House and Senate Democratic appropriators “if they conduct themselves with decorum.”
Vought made his remarks during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters.
During the event, he was asked about Trump stepping on Congress’ role in federal spending. The Constitution explicitly spells out that Congress, not the executive branch, decides spending levels. But Trump and Vought have been pushing the limits of the president’s authority, most recently by sending lawmakers a so-called rescissions package that cancels $9 billion that was already passed by Congress and signed into law.
Congress has dealt with rescissions packages in the past, but Trump’s proposal angered both Republican and Democratic lawmakers with its sparse details and by reversing spending that at least some of them wanted, like money for public radio stations in rural and Tribal areas. It also overrode their own funding decisions. Notably, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, voted against the package.
Vought dismissed the idea that he’d be willing to assure senators that he’d stick to the funding levels they decide in their next bipartisan funding bill — and not later scale back their spending through more rescissions packages.
“No, I’m not,” he said. “Who ran and won on an agenda of a bipartisan appropriations process? Literally no one.”
It’s time for Congress’ appropriations process to “be less by party” and more about cutting spending, said Vought. “I actually think that … if we have a more partisan appropriations process for a time, it will lead to more bipartisanship.”
The OMB director said Trump has a number of tools he can use to impose more spending cuts, like rescissions packages and so-called “pocket rescissions,” a potentially illegal tactic where a president proposes a funding cut so late in the fiscal year that the funding expires before Congress has had 45 days of session to consider it.
“So if the only game in town, because of rescissions, pocket rescissions … is the actual budget process working, if I propose to eliminate community development block grants, go to zero, and the appropriators want to go and cut it by half, that’s the meeting in the middle,” he said. “That improves the process. We’ve gone back to the way it used to work and we have restored budgeting.”
In that scenario, the government’s budget is responsibly restored “because you have the executive branch ensuring that it’s not cowing to a legislative branch’s understanding of its own authorities and powers,” said Vought.
Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images
Vought claimed that while Congress “absolutely does” have constitutional authority over spending, it doesn’t mean Trump can’t roll back what they’ve approved and signed into law.
“That power of the purse … it’s a ceiling, it is not a floor,” he said. “It is not the notion you have to spend every last dollar of that.”
News of Vought’s comments later made its way to Capitol Hill, where Democrats fumed about his disregard for Congress and its bipartisan work. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he should be fired over it.
“He wants to destroy the way the Congress works,” Schumer told reporters, calling Vought “a very great danger” to democracy.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, ripped Vought for “boasting about how he isn’t interested in following the laws Congress passes and, of course, vowing to send up another rescissions package soon.”
“My Republican colleagues should understand that Russ Vought does not respect their constitutional power over federal spending,” Murray said in a statement. “It is past time that Republicans stand up for Congress as a co-equal branch of government.”
At least one Republican senator wasn’t thrilled, either.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told HuffPost that Vought’s comments were “not helpful.”
Vought’s call for more partisanship in Congress even came up in the daily White House press briefing, where Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to say he actually meant the opposite of what he said.
“I think our Office of Budget and Management director was saying this process should be more bipartisan,” Leavitt told reporters.
“What’s not fun?”
– Russ Vought, on slashing federal spending
At one point during his event, Vought said he is “having fun” in his job as he maps out plans for massive cuts to federal agencies. He cited the National Institutes of Health, which is currently the premier biomedical research institution in the world, as one agency that “needs fundamental reform.” The agency has already lost at least 1,200 employees and faces a proposed 40% cut to its budget under the Trump administration.
Asked what he meant by having fun, he said, “What’s not fun?”
Ultimately, Vought said he would define success in his role by going “as far as we possibly can” in restoring fiscal responsibility. He did not mention that Trump’s signature domestic policy package signed into law earlier this month will add $3.3 trillion to the debt.
As for concerns that he is damaging the bipartisan appropriations process in Congress with his plans for rescissions packages — more “are likely to come soon” is all he said — Vought said he expects that debate will continue.
“It’s not going to keep me up at night,” he said.
Igor Bobic contributed reporting.