Congress is gearing up for a potential separation of powers fight with the incoming Trump administration over who has the final pull of the purse strings.

The tension was on display as Russell Vought, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for White House Office of Management and Budget director, testified at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

At issue is Mr. Vought and Mr. Trump’s shared view that the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which limits a president’s authority to ignore congressionally directed spending, is unconstitutional.

“I do not believe it’s constitutional. The president ran on that view,” Mr. Vought said.

Mr. Trump released a video during his campaign calling the Impoundment Control Act “a blatant violation of the separation of powers.”

“When I return to the White House, I will do everything I can to challenge the Impoundment Control Act in court and, if necessary, get Congress to overturn it. We will overturn it,” he said. “I will then use the president’s long-recognized impoundment power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”

Mr. Vought, who served as OMB director during part of Mr. Trump’s first term, has also argued that the impoundment law is unconstitutional and used his conservative think tank, the Center for Renewing America, to make the case.

Democratic Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut questioned Mr. Vought on whether the Trump administration plans to disregard the Impoundment Control Act and Supreme Court precedent on the matter.

Mr. Vought said he is committed to upholding existing law but that he did not want to get ahead of Mr. Trump on any legal challenges or other strategies to pursue impoundment. 

“The president has run on the issue of impoundment and has reminded the country that 200 years of presidents have used this authority,” he said. “And we’ll be developing our approach to this issue and strategy once his administration is in office.”

Mr. Peters, the top Democrat on the committee, was unsatisfied, saying he remains concerned that Mr. Trump plans to unilaterally refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated.

“How will Congress be able to negotiate in good faith if the president is simply able to disregard the bipartisan laws that are passed through the appropriation process?” he said. “How do we negotiate with someone who says, ‘I’m just going to do what I want, to hell with the Constitution’?”

Mr. Vought said, “That’s a mischaracterization [of Mr. Trump’s views] and it is not something which would impact bipartisan negotiations, notwithstanding anything that he announces with regard to impoundment.”

Mr. Blumenthal continued the line of questioning, pressing Mr. Vought on whether he read the Supreme Court decision in Train v. City of New York. The court found that regardless of the 1974 law, which was enacted as it considered the case, the president does not have unilateral authority to impound funds appropriated by Congress. 

“You’re saying that you’re going to just defy the courts … you are simply going to take the law into your own hands,” Mr. Blumenthal asked. 

Mr. Vought again dismissed the question as a misinterpretation.

“The incoming administration is going to take the president’s view on this, as he stated in the campaign, work it through with the lawyers of the Department of Justice … and to put that through a policy process,” he said. “I can’t prejudge that policy process.”

Mr. Blumenthal said he was “astonished and aghast” at the response, which he took to mean that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vought believe they’re above the law and that their opinions should supersede Supreme Court precedent. 

“It’s just baffling that we are in this, I think, unprecedented moment in the history of this country,” he said. “And I think our colleagues should be equally aghast, because this issue goes beyond Republican or Democrat. It’s bigger than one administration or another. It’s whether the law of the land should prevail, or maybe it’s up for grabs, depending on what the president thinks.”

While Republicans did not question Mr. Vought on the impoundment issue, the committee chair, Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul, said he is “sympathetic” to the arguments Mr. Peters and Mr. Blumenthal made.

Mr. Paul said he voted against Mr. Trump’s first-term efforts to assert executive authority over the power of the purse, which he believes the Constitution clearly places with Congress. 

“I think if we appropriate something for a cause, that’s where it’s supposed to go, and that will still be my position,” he said. 

But Mr. Paul said if Congress wants to limit the president from shifting congressionally directed appropriations around, lawmakers need to write better legislation. For example, he said Congress includes in most legislation a waiver allowing the president to ignore the law’s directives for national security reasons.

Mr. Paul said the waivers are intended to flexibility in times of war but presidents of both parties abuse them. 

“They just use that for everything,” he said. “You’re going to find that there’s going to be a bunch of issues that there’s going to be emergencies declared on, but Congress let him.”

Mr. Trump used presidential emergency powers during his first term to shift Defense Department funding to the border wall, something Mr. Peters questioned Mr. Vought about on Wednesday.

Mr. Vought said the Trump administration relied on transfer authority language Congress provided in the Defense appropriations bill to shift funds to the Army Corps of Engineers for use on the border wall.

Mr. Peters and Mr. Paul cited a bill they coauthored to rein in presidential emergency powers that would have national security waivers sunset after 30 days unless the president seeks congressional approval to renew them.

Mr. Vought remained neutral on the effort, saying Congress has a right to change the laws it has enacted giving the president emergency authority and that Mr. Trump would consider his position on such legislation if it reaches his desk. 

Despite Mr. Paul’s support for reining in executive authorities, he did not indicate any opposition to Mr. Vought’s nomination. 

Democrats on the panel, however, seemed universally opposed based on Mr. Vought’s previous experience running OMB.

“We don’t have to guess how you’ll be in this job because you’ve been in the job before,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Michigan Democrat, said.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire Democrat, questioned Mr. Vought on why he has repeatedly advocated for Republicans to use a government shutdown as a political bargaining chip in funding fights, citing an article he wrote in 2011 as an example. 

Mr. Vought disagreed with her question. “I don’t think I have been a person that has wanted to have government shutdowns,” he said.

He cited his job as head of OMB during Mr. Trump’s first term, when he had to keep essential government services running during a 35-day shutdown, the longest in history.

“I know the impact that it has on the federal government,” Mr. Vought said.

Mr. Trump led the shutdown during his first term in an effort to secure border wall funding, but he ultimately agreed to reopen the government without the funding signed into law. Negotiations that transpired in the weeks following led to the approval of a small fraction of the border wall funding he had requested.

Barely a month after winning re-election last year, Mr. Trump encouraged congressional Republicans to shut down the government if necessary to force Democrats to agree to an extension of the debt limit because he did not want the borrowing limit to hit during his second term. Congress rebuffed that suggestion and how to address the debt limit before borrowing authority runs out this summer remains a hot topic of debate.

Mr. Vought said he aspires to lead a budget process that runs on time according to statutory deadlines “so that you don’t have the kind of pile-ups at the end of the fiscal year that we have seen.”

Ms. Hassan did not appear to believe Mr. Vought’s about-turn on advocating for government shutdowns as a negotiating tactic.

“Unfortunately, this is a situation where there seems to be kind of a confirmation conversion, because your words in articles and in talks reflect a different view about the use of government shutdowns,” she said.

Republicans, meanwhile, questioned Mr. Vought on their priorities of cutting spending and reducing the federal bureaucracy and seemed pleased with his responses.

Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, asked him about the Trump administration’s plans to return federal employees to in-person work, which Mr. Vought confirmed is a priority that will be spearheaded by the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Ms. Ernst, chair of the Senate DOGE caucus, cited a federal telework report her office produced that found 3% of employees eligible to telework did so before the COVID-19 pandemic, but now only 6% say they report to work in person on a full-time basis.

“Depending on the agency, between 23% and 68% of surveyed teleworking employees are boosting their salaries by receiving incorrect locality pay,” she said. “Some employees claim to be working in D.C. while living more than 2,000 miles from their office.”

Mr. Vought said that is an area in which the OMB can assist DOGE. He said his office would “ask the right questions, both on the management and the budget side, to get a sense for how our agencies are monitoring their own employees that might be benefiting from the D.C. pay rate when they’re not living in D.C.”

• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.