Senate Budget Committee Republicans approved Russ Vought’s nomination to serve as President Donald Trump’s budget director on Thursday, overcoming the absence of Democrats on the panel who boycotted the markup.
The 11-0 party-line vote clears the way for Vought’s nomination to go to the full Senate. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which shares jurisdiction over the Office of Management and Budget, approved Vought’s selection in a party-line vote last week.
Thanks to Democrats’ boycott, Republicans had to wait for all 11 GOP panel members to trickle in from their other obligations due to rules requiring a quorum of committee members before taking a vote.
“They’re not here. They chose not to be here. It’s their right not to be here,” Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said of the committee’s Democrats.
Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., the ranking Democrat on the committee, announced ahead of the vote that he and other Democrats would skip the markup and instead hold a press conference to protest the Vought nomination, where they were joined by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.
They said Vought was “dangerously unfit” for the job given his record promoting efforts to block federal spending on initiatives the Trump administration disagrees with, even after Congress approved the funds.
Since Vought is not currently an OMB official, he is not directly responsible for the funding freeze memo that caught much of Washington by surprise this week. But he’s regarded as an architect of such policies after serving as OMB director in the first Trump administration and maintaining close ties to Trumpworld during the campaign and transition.
Merkley alleged that Vought was “intimately involved” with the freeze.
Vought “appears to be acting as OMB director without being confirmed,” Merkley said. “One of the questions we have asked the administration is, is he on the payroll? Is he a senior adviser and what role is he doing? Is it appropriate for him to be serving in a capacity he hasn’t yet been confirmed to? We have not received those answers.”
Later on the floor, Schumer called for another confirmation hearing to ask about the funding freeze memo, since Vought’s two initial hearings occurred before the news broke this week.
Merkley said there were procedural tools at his party’s disposal to try to make confirmation more difficult.
“Certainly there is a process that involves coming to the floor. That’s a process in which we have the ability to request the full time required under our rule,” Merkley said. “The process when you’re on the floor, we’ll probably utilize all the tools available to keep highlighting that this particular nomination is [an] absolutely devastating consequence to our laws and Constitution.”
The move followed a firestorm over a memorandum issued by the budget office Monday ordering a temporary pause on grants, loans and other financial assistance across the government.
The White House rescinded the memo Wednesday, while noting that Trump’s earlier separate executive orders pausing foreign development aid, clean energy projects, and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, remained in effect.
The memo had put a hold on thousands of agency accounts pending a review and scrubbing by budget officials to ensure compliance with Trump’s policies. Officials said the hold would not affect payments to individuals, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Head Start and others.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the OMB rescinded the memo “to end any confusion on federal policy created by the court ruling and the dishonest media coverage.”
While all Republicans on both committees supported Vought, some have raised concerns about Trump’s view that the president has the authority to spend less money than has been passed by Congress and enacted into law. Trump has called the 1974 law that limits a president’s ability to delay or cancel spending unconstitutional.
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