All posts tagged "Russell Vought"

Staffers inside Congress' most powerful watchdog are sounding the alarm as President Donald Trump weighs who should run their agency.

Trump is considering nominating Eric Ueland, the top deputy to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, to lead the Government Accountability Office as comptroller general, a post that carries a 15-year term, the Washington Sun reported Thursday, citing four people familiar with the discussions.

The pick would put an architect of the Trump administration's spending and workforce moves in charge of the agency that has repeatedly ruled some of those moves illegal. As OMB's number two, Ueland has overseen sweeping changes to the federal workforce, and he also serves as acting head of the Office of Government Ethics and largely dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development....

While President Donald Trump's own advisers waited for him to approve midterm campaign spending, he instead spent an August strategy session asking his aide to pull up footage of himself on her tablet, according to a New York Times report based on interviews with 12 insiders.

The August 7 Oval Office meeting included Republican strategists, top adviser James Blair, and chief of staff Susie Wiles, gathered to discuss super PAC spending as GOP campaigns grew nervous Trump might not open his checkbook in time. Instead, Trump turned to aide Natalie Harp, known for feeding him flattering coverage of himself, and asked her to show footage he liked: crowds, Marine One, fighter jets overhead.

One clip featured UFC's Dana White calling him "the toughest, most resilient person that I've ever met," a line Trump still brings up with visible enthusiasm....

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) accused the Trump administration's budget office of breaking the law Friday after it moved to cancel $810 million in funding Congress had already approved.

In a statement, Collins said the administration sent over the package of so-called pocket rescissions with no advance notice, calling it the budget office's latest effort to chip away at Congress' authority over federal spending. The Office of Management and Budget is led by Russ Vought.

A pocket rescission exploits a quirk in the Impoundment Control Act, which lets the administration freeze funds for 45 days while Congress considers a cancellation request. A request sent near the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 can let the money expire before lawmakers act. This package arrived with five days left....

White House officials clashed in the Oval Office over whether President Donald Trump should take a larger knife to the country's largest medical research agency.

According to reporting by The Washington Post, the dispute pitted White House budget director Russell Vought against Jay Bhattacharya, who leads the National Institutes of Health. Three people familiar with the feud told The Post that Vought accused the NIH of bankrolling "woke" initiatives that cut against Trump's agenda.

Vought argued ongoing spending clashed with a Trump executive order that bars "equity-related" grants and contracts, sources told The Post. Bhattacharya defended how his roughly $47 billion agency awards its money....

A Trump administration official found a way to quietly strangle federal programs by freezing congressionally approved spending, a legal expert warned.

In a Thursday piece for The Bulwark, economist Catherine Rampell called out the tactic used by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. She laid out how he's unilaterally withholding congressionally appropriated funds even though "his maneuvers are plainly illegal," Rampell wrote.

Vought's targets so far, Rampell wrote, include the Smithsonian, Community Development Financial Institutions, USAID, and medical research grants....

A new analysis estimated that President Donald Trump racked up a $103 billion bill for the Iran war in 120 days.

According to an analysis by Popular Information, the Trump administration has no plan to pay for the Iran war, and neither do congressional Republicans.

The analysis found that over four months, the U.S. spent more than $103 billion on the war in Iran, based on budgetary costs such as operations, personnel, and matériel. It also noted that Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told the House Appropriations Committee last week that the U.S. has spent $30 billion on the war....