A few years before President Trump returned to the White House, Russell T. Vaught, the head of his budget, began mapping plans to reduce the federal government.
Vought's design will cut spending by around $9 trillion over the next decade. From housing vouchers to student loans, the entire federal program is eliminated. The government will fire thousands of civil workers, including those who investigated tax fraud. And Washington restricts aid to the poor and demands that Americans work in exchange for benefits.
The idea formed the foundation for Vought's plan to end “awakening and weaponised” bureaucracy. This is a policy guide he published in 2022 to take part in the major budget battles. His full vision wasn't a reality at the time, but the roughly 100-page blueprint increased its importance as Trump won reelection and reinstalled it on his perch.
In the perennial battle over the federal balance sheet, few officials are more important than Vert. As Director of the Management and Budget, he wields great power over the US government, its workers, and the millions of people whose lives are shaped by the decline and flow of the federal fund.
Vought brings an offensive style to the work revealed in podcast interviews and public writings, particularly in the years since Trump's 2020 defeat. The longtime budget expert sketched the vast presidential vision of power for Project 2025, a conservative blueprint created by Trump's Heritage Foundation. And in 2021, Vought founded his own organization, Renewing America.
So Vought has pledged to refine his ambition to marry Christian values with extreme financial austerity, and to eliminate federal programs that are considered useless “awakening” or secular. In scrutinizing the budget, his approach made him Elon Musk and his natural ally of so-called government efficiency.
Now returning to OMB, Vought has brought together a team of like-minded advisors working to prepare Trump's 2026 budget proposal. That blueprint could lead Congress to its job to expand the set of expensive, expired tax cuts enacted during Trump's first term.
A document reviewed by The New York Times showed in late February that OMB staff were compiling recommendations to wipe out programs Republicans have long wanted to cut back. These reductions include imposing work requirements on food stamp recipients, terminating public service student loan forgiveness, and eliminating certain federal Medicaid funds in the state.
The President and Vert will also join the idea that the White House should have vast power above the strings of the country's wallet, and will halt or cancel federal spending even if Congress instructs them otherwise. That stance encourages the White House to already suspend billions of dollars distributions, including foreign aid, infrastructure spending and payments to food banks.
The delay caused a lawsuit and a barely noticed move that sparked an investigation by the Government Accountability Bureau, a nonpartisan watchdog set up by Congress that approved the investigation in February. Some Democrats claim that the Budget Office has otherwise violated the law after quietly disabling the government website on Monday.
“It's not only illegal to remove this website, but it's a brave move to hide this administration's spending from Americans and Congress,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Connecticut's president Rosa Delauro, the leading democratic spender of the week.
Vought declined to be interviewed through a spokeswoman. In the preamble to the 2022 Policy Guide, he wrote: “There's evidence of America's financial breakdown everywhere.”
In Washington, Vought's demands for austerity are little novel. In Washington, policymakers often lament the country's $36 trillion debt, but the moment Trump tries to rebuild the federal bureaucracy, he has a new power.
Just as Doge's Agent Blitz Federal Agency – shutting down the entire program, dismissing thousands of workers and digging holes in sensitive federal computer systems, Vought “we had a quiet struggle to lay the foundations to make these cuts permanent in the long run,” he explained in an interview with Fox Business in February.
In the same month, Vaugh ordered the agency to submit detailed plans by March and April, ensuring that it would cut spending, fire workers, sell office buildings, save money and “advance the president's policy priorities.”
James C. Capletta, a former OMB official who is currently a senior fellow at the American Institute of Corporate Research at the Right-handed bastion, said Vert's actions reflect the view that “the federal enforcement department should be in the service of the president in a way that goes beyond the professional control of government agencies.”
The reorganization arrived several weeks after the Budget Office under interim guidance. Political pressure and multiple lawsuits have forced the White House to withdraw its policy, but budget officials continue to halt payments for several federal payments. This week, the move sparked a rare bipartisan rebel in the Senate when the Trump administration essentially refused to spend around $3 billion in emergency funds and refusing to spend emergency funds to combat other programs.
“Every day there's a headline about another institution about abolished funds,” said Sky Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, a left-leaning advocacy group that appealed to OMB for its actions.
Freeze highlighted Vought's longstanding belief that the Budget Office must act as a White House “air traffic management system,” as he wrote in the Project 2025 chapter. There, in much of his work, Voute has long criticised civil workers, portraying some of their actions motivated by their “your Zenda.” He previously promised to put them in “trauma,” he said in the video where Propublica first surfaced.
“They're always hiding the ball,” Voute said in a May 2023 podcast interview, adding that Republicans “have to micromanage everything that's part of your agency or make sure your right arm is.”
With Trump's help, the two men have set up a team in recent weeks, reflecting Vought's views.
The roster includes Mark Paoletta, an advisor to the Office of Budget, who served with Vert during the first Trump administration and later served at the Center for renewing America. Paoletta represented Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, in a House investigation that strives to maintain power after the 2020 election. Paoletta has drafted his first resignation order since then, since he freezes almost all federal spending.
Jeffrey Bossart Clark, who works in the major OMB office overseeing regulations, could have faced the charges of Congressional charges for refusing to testify on charges that attempted to restore the results of the 2020 race.
Trump appointed deputy director Dan Bishop is a former Republican House member who sponsored a bill that would restrict transgender people from using their preferred public toilets while serving in the North Carolina Legislature. The Senate confirmed his appointment Wednesday.
Testifying this month, Bishop admitted that he agreed with those who believe the 2020 elections were integrated. The former House member said the president has the authority to pursue “the end of the waste and the status quo in Washington.”
The comments angered Democrats who recalled Trump's first term. The budget advisor maintained that the White House had acted legally in 2021 and in his own nomination hearing, and years later.
After the Senate confirmed him along the party's line, Vought pleaded Republicans with a promise that the administration would take aggressive steps to cut spending. On Tuesday, Trump signaled that the White House could start by submitting a formal list of proposed cuts to Congress, reflecting some of the savings Doge has identified.
Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican and member of the House Budget Committee, said in an interview: “What the president has is sweet music for all of us who want a very conservative budget.”
At the Center for Renewing America, in 2022 Vought previewed the Stark Cut track, targeting benefits programs, including Medicaid. He proposed limiting funding and eligibility. This is an idea that has resurfaced in recent weeks.
“It gives you a significant level of savings and reform,” Voute told the Senate Budget Committee this year.
The term “Woke” has appeared in Voute's documents 77 times. The proposal aimed to reduce the “Awakening Agenda” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example targeting money for “niches and small population groups.” It proposed dumping billions of dollars on “wake foreign aid spending.” Eliminate the entire programme of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. And then, from the federal ledger, he casts the “secular and awakened religion” of climate change.
“It's a central and immediate threat facing the country, that all our politicians must rise and defeat,” Vert wrote in his preamble to his budget. “The fight cannot wait.”
Alan Rappeport contributed the report.
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