Senate confirms Russell Vought to lead OMB in party-line vote

Despite an overnight effort on the Senate floor from Democratic lawmakers to derail Russell Vought’s path to becoming Office of Management and Budget director, the Project 2025 co-author secured every Republican vote Thursday and was confirmed by a 53-47 tally to lead the White House office once again.

Vought, who also served as OMB director during the final six months of President Donald Trump’s first term, now regains control of the White House office charged with coordinating the administration’s budget and policy efforts, as well as overseeing IT, procurement, agency performance and financial management across the federal government. 

Democrats put up a 30-hour floor fight against Vought, one of the architects of the Heritage Foundation’s playbook to dismantle the federal government. Leading up to his confirmation, Vought faced withering questioning from Senate Democrats during hearings before the chamber’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Budget committees, particularly about policies spelled out in Project 2025 and for saying in a private speech that “we want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., ranking member of the chamber’s budget committee, said during Wednesday’s floor proceedings that Vought “views federal workers ‘as the villains’ and seeks to replace non-partisan, professional civil servants with corrupt lackeys valued for their loyalty over their expertise.” 

“Vought’s policies are already hurting communities across our country — in red, blue, and purple states,” he continued. “And it’s clear that he’s willing to raid our Treasury to line the pockets to enrich the already richest Americans, leaving working families in the cold.”

Before Thursday’s vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., chided Democrats for making arguments against Vought that he said lacked “self-reflection, because over the last four years, there have been a lot of times when the executive branch went around the Congress or tried to rewrite the laws passed.”

“The previous administration, an administration of a different political party, came to some very aggressive conclusions with respect to how they wanted to modify and change and alter laws passed by this institution, the United States Senate,” said Thune, who pointed specifically to the Biden administration’s handling of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program. 

During his confirmation hearings, Vought dodged Democratic questioning about the Schedule F employment classification, which makes it easier for a president to fire civil servants, and left the door open for a reexamination of telework policies in agency collective bargaining agreements.

Vought’s sidestepping at those hearings foreshadowed early Trump administration actions targeting the federal workforce. On his first day in office, Trump restored Schedule F — rebranded as Schedule Policy/Career — and ordered a return to in-person work for agency employees. An Office of Personnel Management memo later said some telework and remote work arrangements in collective bargaining agreements were “unlawful.”

In another policy aimed at slashing the federal workforce, OPM presented a “deferred resignation offer” to agency staffers, though a federal judge on Thursday paused the deadline. 

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said on the Senate floor Wednesday that Vought’s goals as OMB director are “not secret, nor are they subtle.”

“We know he is planning for cuts beyond anything this country has ever seen, and we know, if Russ Vought gets his way and gets his hands on the nation’s funding again, he will not just draw blood, he will cut programs families rely on down to the bone,” she said.

Murray also railed against Vought for “already putting his agenda in place” despite not being confirmed to his position until Thursday. She pointed specifically to an OMB memo last month that paused federal grants, loans and other assistance that reportedly had metadata indicating it had been written by people with links to Project 2025. The White House later rescinded that memo, though some spending freezes have reportedly continued. 

The Trump administration’s efforts to “get rid of thousands of federal workers through firings,” issue “scam buyout” offers and “trying to illegally abolish entire agencies with the stroke of the pen has Project 2025 written all over it,” Murray said.  

Democratic lawmakers were particularly incensed by Vought’s unwillingness to disavow impoundment — the practice of delaying or canceling appropriations signed into law. Refusing to release appropriated funds undercuts Congress and violates the law, Democrats and the vast majority of legal experts have said. 

“This is not about liking or not liking what Mr. Vought has written, what he stands for, what his policy positions are, though I clearly disagree with those,” Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., said Wednesday. “This is about whether or not we are going to abide by the systems of law in this country that say that we have a separation of powers, and that the power of the Senate and Congress, the power of the purse that rests in the Senate and the Congress, that we keep that power. That is an institutional prerogative that I think is on the line.”