Russ Vought’s Scheme Has Been Unmasked
The courts have decided: Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought broke the law. The American people deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent, but time and again, Russ Vought hides the truth.
During the Biden administration, I led the charge to require the public disclosure of legally binding funding decisions known as apportionments. When I drafted this requirement—and it was signed into law—it was not about which party held power. It was about showing the American people how their hard-earned taxpayer dollars are being spent in their communities.
On March 24, at Russ Vought’s command, OMB illegally removed this transparency website. At the end of July, United States District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan emphatically ruled that Vought has been illegally hiding his sabotage of investments and services for over four months. The courts continued to deny OMB’s request to keep hiding their stealing, with a panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit forcing Russ Vought to restore the website on August 15 with equally forceful criticism of his lawlessness. While OMB was slow to share the information, and they have yet to post all that is required under the law, one thing is clear: Russ Vought and his relentless desire to single-handedly control every investment in American communities have been unmasked.
Vought is raising costs by halting federal assistance that would bring down prices and make everyday life easier for families.
The Vought agenda is Project 2025. Vought was the lead author of this radical manifesto, developed in secret, which embraces the starvation, and ultimately privatization, of government. In public polling, more than half of the people surveyed can see the Project 2025 agenda being carried out, even though fewer than 1 in 7 Americans support it.
It is no wonder that those who have heard of Vought’s agenda disapprove of it. Like its predecessors, it is filled with embarrassing legal theories and anti-constitutional lawbreaking and is wreaking havoc on American families. Time and again, Vought has violated the law and ignored the courts and nonpartisan government watchdogs to hide what he is doing.
We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, and Americans are demanding relief. But Vought is raising costs by halting federal assistance that would bring down prices and make everyday life easier for families. For example, Russ Vought’s funding freezes have prevented over $25 billion in Department of Energy funding from being used to reduce utility costs and consumer prices through improvements to the electric grid and rebates that would be paid directly to American households.
Americans deserve cures and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, diabetes, mental health issues, and maternal mortality. But Vought has tried to hide his cuts and halted lifesaving work for research, treatments, and cures. That’s right—Russ Vought said no, and so he froze $15 billion in lifesaving biomedical research.
American children and their parents have seen their class sizes grow, and their teachers remain overworked and underpaid. The Vought agenda doubles down on these concerns and cuts federal assistance from classrooms. Instead of working to ensure every child has access to a high-quality education, Russ Vought hid his decision to block nearly $7 billion in funding owed to every state in the country to help school districts across the country plan for the upcoming school year. That money was released after weeks of bipartisan outcry, but with little time left before the end of the year, officials must now race to get it to the intended recipients.
America’s farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses need assistance to help solve on-farm resource issues related to air and water quality, ground and surface water conservation, soil health, and mitigation against drought and increasing weather volatility. But Vought nickel-and-dimes American farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses. He blocked the payment of over $800 million in funding owed to rural small businesses and farmers.
America’s veterans and their families need reliable and responsive access to the services and benefits that they have earned. But Vought wants to hide the alarming degree to which he is gutting the capability of government to provide services at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which expects to cut 30,000 employees by the end of this year.
These cases are not just one-offs. They are part of Vought’s much larger effort to steal from the American people. Vought’s thefts of appropriated spending total over $410 billion since President Trump returned to office, as I along with my colleague Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) have been able to uncover. Tens of billions of that funding will expire on September 30 and will be lost forever unless a law can be enacted to save it.
How has he wrested this authority? By hiding funding decisions he is required by law to share. Vought thinks Congress and the American public have no right to know what he is doing, even as courts continue to disagree.
Vought’s latest assault on the constitutional order is pending before the Supreme Court: He is currently freezing almost $5 billion in lawfully enacted appropriations and has made clear he will refuse to release them until they are past the point where they can be used for their intended purposes. This is illegal. Nonpartisan experts at the Government Accountability Office clearly said so in 2018, and reiterated the same last week. I continue to fight to make this clear, and have presented this argument directly to the Supreme Court to make sure they hear that Congress believes these actions are unlawful, a viewpoint shared by myself, Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Murray (the two leaders of the Senate Committee on Appropriations), and the Republican dean of the House, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY; the longest continuously serving member of the House of Representatives).
Sunlight alone will not stop OMB’s unlawful behavior, and that is why it is time for OMB to have a dedicated and full-time inspector general.
While he often operates under the radar, Russ Vought has been unmasked. The American people have learned who he truly is.
We can defeat Russ Vought’s attempts to centralize and hide power for himself over all others. His actions during President Trump’s first term helped motivate the Congress to require OMB’s legally binding budget decisions to be public, and I strongly believe that his desire for total control has only gotten worse during this administration. He has made clear that sunlight alone will not stop OMB’s unlawful behavior, and that is why it is time for OMB to have a dedicated and full-time inspector general. Trillions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars are at stake, and we cannot allow an agency with access to all of that money to operate in the shadows.
I want to lower the cost of living for all American communities and deliver critical services and investments to the working class, the middle class, and the vulnerable. That victory can be achieved through bipartisan cooperation to pass annual funding bills—signed into law by President Trump—that ensure elected representatives’ commitments to their constituents are fulfilled.
But Russ Vought wants to prevent that. Make no mistake: Every illegal action he takes is designed to make sure his vision comes to pass. He is poisoning negotiations—illegally canceling hundreds of billions in already promised assistance for our communities, families, and children.
As the courts have determined, Americans deserve to know who Russ Vought is and what he is doing with their money. They deserve to know. Light has now been shed on Russ Vought’s actions, and it is now time to install a dedicated watchdog to increase oversight and accountability for him and the Office of Management and Budget.
===
Rep. Rosa DeLauro serves as ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee. She represents Connecticut’s Third District in the U.S. House of Representatives.