WASHINGTON – Democrats have been waiting a long time to grill White House Budget Director Russ Vought, who has overseen the Trump administration’s illegal efforts to shutter entire federal agencies, withhold billions of dollars in federal funds appropriated by Congress and generally disregard the Constitution’s separation of powers.
On Wednesday, they finally got their chance.
Vought, whose avoidance of congressional testimony over the past year led Democrats to put his face on a “MISSING” milk carton, was purportedly in front of the House Budget Committee to testify about President Donald Trump’s 2027 budget request. But Democrats took the opportunity to press their numerous grievances against Vought, a key architect of Project 2025.
“I’m glad you are finally here,” grumbled Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.). “Throughout your tenure at the Office of Management and Budget, you’ve made the Trump administration’s priorities clear: terrorizing federal employees, ripping health care away from millions of Americans … and illegally withholding money allocated by Congress.”
“This is indeed unacceptable,” Tonko said. “The American people deserve better from you.”
Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) pressed Vought on violating the Impoundment Control Act, which bars presidents from spending money on something Congress didn’t approve. It also bars presidents from blocking funds appropriated by Congress from going out.
Vought dismissed the idea he’s routinely broken that law: “We have fully complied with the Impoundment Control Act,” he said.
But Peters brought up two separate reports issued by the federal Government Accountability Office that lay out how the Trump administration has illegally withheld nearly $8 billion in National Institutes of Health grants, $7 billion for K-12 public schools nationwide and hundreds of millions of dollars for Head Start programs across the country.
Asked about that, Vought went after the GAO: The agency is “typically wrong” and “very partisan,” he claimed. “They are typically on the exact opposite of wherever the Trump administration is.”
That’s not true, though. The GAO is an independent, nonpartisan entity that both parties have long relied on to investigate how federal funds are spent.
Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) laid into Vought for being “at the center of President Trump’s illegal refusal to spend federal money.” She asked him about a federal judge concluding that he unlawfully terminated $7.6 billion in clean energy grants based on whether recipients lived in states that voted primarily for Democrats.
“I don’t recall what that judge said but–” began the White House budget director.
Balint promptly pulled out that judge’s Jan. 12 ruling and began reading aloud from it: Vought and his team “freely admit that they made grant determination decisions primarily, if not exclusively, based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024.”
Another federal judge this month found that the Trump administration broke the law and froze federal funds “as a politically motivated move disguised as fraud prevention,” she continued. “Are you trying to get revenge on states that did not vote for your boss?”
“Of course not,” said Vought, who tried to start talking about President Joe Biden. Balint cut him off: “Are you trying to get revenge against blue states because they did not support the president? Courts have said that, in fact, you did do that.”
White House Budget Director Russ Vought has overseen the Trump administration’s illegal efforts to shutter entire federal agencies and withhold billions of dollars in federal funds appropriated by Congress.
Andrew Harnik via Getty Images
Throughout the hours-long hearing, Republicans tried to refocus on Trump’s budget and the party’s accomplishments. Some complimented Vought for cutting spending, and the chairman, Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), hailed the “historic” cuts they made by passing Trump’s signature law last year, the One Big Beautiful Act. Those “historic” cuts kicked millions of people off their health coverage to pay for tax cuts for wealthy people.
But Democrats kept bringing attention back to the “cruelty” of Vought’s draconian spending cuts. That was unexpectedly the focus of the hearing as soon as it kicked off, as protesters shouted down Vought during his opening remarks and had to be hauled out of the room as the hearing briefly went into recess.
The activists, it turned out, were former USAID and PEPFAR employees. In a statement, they later said they were there to demand an end to Vought’s “illegal obstruction” of funding for global AIDS and health programs.
“Russell Vought is directly responsible for illegally withholding Congressionally appropriated funds” for these initiatives, said Charles King, CEO of Housing Works, one of the groups involved in the protest. “These funding disruptions have already contributed to preventable deaths and threaten to reverse decades of progress in the fight against HIV worldwide. Enough is enough. Congress must ensure Vought stops this deadly sabotage.”
Throughout all of it, Vought seemed largely unfazed. A proud ideologue, he’s long argued the executive branch has vast powers it can use to enforce a president’s agenda, and if Congress doesn’t like ceding its constitutional turf to the executive branch, that’s on them.
But to at least one budget expert watching the hearing, the White House budget director seemed to think he could get by with misleading or false statements about his budgetary actions. When confronted by Democrats on specifics, he flailed.
“It’s very clear Russ Vought doesn’t actually do well when directly pressed,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of Federal Budget Policy at American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. “There was a recognition he knows some of this stuff is indefensible.”
