Vought Watch: Will Senate Confirm Architect of Funding Freeze Debacle as OMB Director & Solidify Project 2025-Led Trump Administration Agenda?

WASHINGTON D.C. — If the Republican-led Senate votes to confirm Russ Vought as Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), it would remove any doubt that the Trump administration agenda is a mirror image of the extreme Project 2025 agenda – despite Donald Trump’s repeated denials of Project 2025 on the campaign trail. Vought was a key author of the Project 2025 ‘How to’ guide for a conservative administration to gut checks and balances to take more control over American lives, including helping write its second chapter urging the Executive Branch to violate federal law by withholding funding that Congress appropriated under the constitution. The final vote is set for tonight after Senate Democrats protested by holding the Senate floor overnight, railing against Vought as a dangerous choice.

Project 2025 and Trump Agenda are One and the Same: Vought joined at least five other Project 2025 alumni that Donald Trump tapped to serve top posts in his administration despite repeatedly distancing himself from the effort on the campaign trail. A new review from government watchdog Accountable.US found that the Trump administration has already taken up nearly 20 Project 2025 mandates just in its first weeks.

Just days into the Trump administration, Americans are already suffering real consequences from the Project 2025 blueprint after an OMB directive for a wide-scale federal funding freeze ignited mass confusion, shut down Medicaid portals in all 50 states, and disrupted access to critical aid from veterans’ housing, community health centers to Meals on Wheels for seniors. The memo was ‘rescinded’ following the chaos and complaints from lawmakers, including Republicans, but the fallout continues, including new reports that “Half of Virginia’s community health centers have been cut off from federal grant money, forcing some to stop providing certain services and others to close branches.”

As Politico noted, the funding freeze “hews closely to the strategy [Vought] sketched out for bringing the federal bureaucracy in the heel,” and “multiple people close to the administration told POLITICO” that Vought “played [a] key role in the funding freeze.”

Continues Carrk, “With Vought’s nomination, Donald Trump solidified that he’s fully embraced Project 2025 and its Wealthy-First goals that will punish seniors, veterans, and children to pay for more tax breaks for corporations and billionaire donors. Beyond Vought’s blueprint for indiscriminately ripping away critical aid from the most vulnerable communities, Trump’s returning OMB Director made a career out of trying to gut Social Security and Medicare. It’s a red flag these critical programs seniors depend on could be back on the chopping block.” 

Vought’s return to the Trump administration also means that Social Security and Medicare are not as safe as President Trump has claimed. After Vought became Trump’s OMB acting director in January 2019, his office prepared then-President Trump’s FY2020 budget proposals to gut Medicaid by $1.5 trillion, Medicare by $845 billion, and Social Security by $25 billion over the following decade. Then, for FY2021, Vought’s OMB issued the President’s budget proposing a $451 billion cut to Medicare over the following decade. This follows Vought’s decades-long history of efforts to gut Social Security, Medicare, and other critical social programs.

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