Russell Vought, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) for a second time, is expected to push a series of measures from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 deregulatory blueprint for the new administration to slash EPA’s budget and rules, as well as wider efforts to scale back the executive branch civil service.
Trump tapped Vought to reprise his role as OMB director in a Nov. 23 post on Truth Social. “Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government,” he wrote. “Russ has spent many years working in Public Policy in Washington, D.C., and is an aggressive cost cutter and deregulator who will help us implement our America First Agenda across all Agencies.”
Vought, who served as OMB director for the second half of Trump’s first term, authored the Project 2025 chapter on the Executive Office of the President of the United States where he voiced support for a powerful role for OMB, including that its director “must ensure that OMB has sufficient visibility into the deep caverns of agency decision-making.”
After leaving the White House, Vought launched the conservative Center for Renewing America in 2021 that has weighed in in favor of recess appointments for Trump and for steep budget cuts.
In the OMB chapter of Project 2025, Vought endorses revoking many Biden actions while boosting OMB and its Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs’ (OIRA) power to make rules “less burdensome.”
For example, he wrote that the “next President should immediately begin to undo” changes Biden made to OMB’s cost-benefit manual and the long-standing Clinton-era executive order (EO) on regulatory review.
He advocates “a rigorous, data-driven approach that will result in the least burdensome rules possible.”
He also favors reviving a directive from a now-overturned Trump EO that significance guidance documents must undergo OIRA review. He also called for boosting OIRA funding and staff because its reviews “often leads to fewer regulatory burdens.”
Vought was previously confirmed for the director role during Trump’s first term on July 20, 2020, in a 51-45 party line vote that came after he led the office in an acting capacity since at least April 2019. He had previously been confirmed by the Senate as deputy OMB chief.
OMB helps coordinate all budget and spending decisions in the administration.
‘Climate Extremism’
Vought was in the news during battles over EPA’s budget last year after he floated a fiscal year 2023 framework that proposed reducing EPA’s budget to $6.5 billion, a nearly 30 percent decrease from FY21 enacted levels.
“Fundamentally, the EPA’s radical shift toward climate extremism and a destructive green energy regulatory agenda is little more than a declaration of war on hard-working Americans and their families. Programs that pour tax dollars into such extreme initiatives, such as the Information Exchange Outreach program, are eliminated while other areas, like criminal enforcement of bureaucratic whims, have been drastically reduced in a bid to alleviate the negative impacts such policies have on employers and working households,” the framework said.
However, the framework did continue to prioritize funds for Superfund cleanups and funds under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.
In response to Trump’s nomination that Vought revive his role from the first term, the League of Conservation Voters vice president and former EPA scientist Matthew Davis said: “In case there was any doubt, Trump’s selection of a key co-author of Project 2025 makes crystal clear once again that he wasn’t serious about distancing himself from it,” as Trump claimed during the campaign. “Vought has promised to traumatize civil servants and to ‘shut down’ agency funding to carry out his dangerous Project 2025 agenda, but we will fight him at every step and stand with these public servants who are dedicated to protecting our health, safety, environment, and the communities these agencies serve.”
And James Goodwin of the Center for Progressive Reform warned that Vought “will dedicate every day to bringing Project 2025 to life,” a project that demands “a frightening, unprecedented consolidation of power within the hands of a president who has made no secret of his autocratic pretensions.”
Project 2025 singles out OMB “for a key role in translating its dream of an authoritarian presidency into America’s nightmare,” Goodwin said. “Every second that Vought spends as OMB Director, the future of U.S. democracy would be in danger. The rights of hundreds of millions of Americans would be at unacceptable risk. The widely shared values that have sustained us as a country for over 200 years would be debased,” Goodwin said. -- Dawn Reeves (dreeves@iwpnews.com)
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to correct the Clinton-era executive order to which Vought referred.
