After days of contention, the Senate on Thursday voted to confirm Russell Vought to be the country’s next director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The Senate voted 53-47 along party lines to return Vought to the job. Vought, 48, previously served as director of the OMB during part of President Donald Trump’s first term. The OMB produces and oversees the president’s budget, among other responsibilities, and has gotten outsize attention given Trump’s effort to slash the federal bureaucracy.
Vought’s nomination courted controversy among Democrats. Vought is the president of the conservative think tank Center for Renewing America, which was on the advisory board for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a blueprint for the next Republican presidential administration — an initiative that Trump disavowed on the campaign trail.
Still, Democrats attempted to tie Trump to the Project 2025 agenda, and Vought’s pick to lead the budget office caused some uproar on the Left.
Vought’s confirmation was also somewhat overshadowed by the Trump administration’s recent efforts to temporarily suspend large amounts of federal funding. While the controversial memo was later rescinded, it showed that the administration is serious about upending the federal administrative state and overhauling the government.
Vought’s confirmation vote came to the Senate floor despite a last-minute move by Senate Democrats to boycott his committee vote to protest the now-rescinded funding freeze by the Trump administration.
Democrats also launched a talkathon on Wednesday in protest of Vought and Trump’s policies. Senate Democrats delivered a marathon of speeches on the Senate floor that lasted overnight and was designed to delay the vote.
Democrats have railed against the way Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk have worked to downsize the federal government through the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
“Imagine a world where Russell Vought and the DOGE team up, and it’s a team that can do such harm and pain for America,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), speaking on the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon.
Trump has also moved to re-implement a version of his Schedule F mandate that he imposed during his first term in office.
Hours after he was sworn into office, Trump signed an executive order giving him more power over career federal workers. The move is part of a broader effort to rein in the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy, an issue he will work on with Vought at the head of OMB.
The order makes it clear that employees in question are not required to personally or politically support the current president or policies of the administration, but that they “are required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the president.”
The order is meant to make government employees more responsive to the president and to prevent what Trump has termed “the deep state” from obstructing his agenda. Critics have argued that it would undermine the quality of the civil service.
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Budget Committee, Vought defended Schedule F.
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“Schedule F … is meant to ensure the president’s administration has people working for him that are actually going to do the policies he ran on,” Vought said. “We think that is an important fundamental principle.”
Vought graduated from Wheaton College, an evangelical school in Illinois. He is married and has two daughters.