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‘Astonished and aghast’: Project 2025 co-author grilled in Senate for Trump budget post

2 10
16.01.2025

Democrats grilled Russell Vought, who was tapped to be President-elect Trump’s next budget chief, for his ties to Project 2025 and the powers of the executive branch as senators weighed his nomination.

Vought testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Wednesday afternoon.

He previously served as head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Trump during his first term and has recently garnered attention as a co-author behind a blueprint produced by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation that was often the target of Democratic attacks during the 2024 presidential election cycle.

Sen. Gary Peters (Ind.), the top Democrat on the committee, pressed Vought at the top of the hearing over previous actions under the Trump administration to freeze security assistance for Ukraine in a move he called illegal.

“The Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that all these actions that were a violation of the Impoundment Control Act, and that your actions then forced Congress to re-appropriate the funds,” Peters added, before asking Vought, if he’s confirmed, would he “commit to follow the law and not allow OMB to withhold funding from programs that Congress has appropriated?”

Vought pushed back, saying he disagreed “with the characterization” and that, in his “time at OMB, we followed the law consistently.”

Peters then asked Vought if he thought it was “within the law” to “withhold funds that are appropriated by Congress,” to which Vought argued funds were not “inappropriately” held and that the administration was “engaged in the policy process with regard to how funding would flow to Ukraine” at the time.

The GAO said in a 2020 report that the Trump........

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