The Divine Right of Russ Vought
POWER OF THE PURSE
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought continues to operate in his own reality where the president controls both purse and sword. Speaking at a hard-right political conference,1 where he also expounded on his Christian nationalism, Vought asserted that Congress somehow has given the Executive branch broad impoundment power. He also opined that the Government Accountability Office “shouldn’t exist,” or at least should have its budget cut further than the 49% reduction proposed by friendly House Republicans. Vought justified GAO abolition because it is a “quasi-legislative independent entity,” but at a conference where attendees oppose modernity and liberalism and seek to attain a better aristocracy that unifies church and state, his aims of unfettered illiberal power could not be presented more starkly.
A new official document promulgated by Vought on preparing the next fiscal year's budget, OMB Circular A-11, contains a number of anti-Congressional howlers. The guidance deletes the standing definition of impoundment “to ensure consistency with the Impoundment Control Act,” which is saying it’s not illegal if there’s no definition. The circular also declares GAO opinions not binding on the Executive branch and that federal agencies “are expected to comply with guidance from the OMB in interpreting relevant fiscal laws and administering federal programs.” This language is straight nullification by the White House of the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which created both GAO and OMB, several other federal statutes, and a century of case law. Vought makes clear he views directions by Congress as at most suggestions, and considers independent agencies an oxymoron. (Hat tip to Biden OMB vet Bobby Kogan for surfacing this language in the document.)
Some of what the circular prescribes OMB is already doing. Friday, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities published a study of 1,800 internal documents that demonstrate how OMB has added “new layers of political interference and control over agency spending to impose its policy priorities and preferences, even when doing so conflicts with the law.” It has done so by slowing apportionment approvals, creating secret additional conditions on agencies receiving funds, and improperly designating funds as “unallocated” to make them unavailable to agencies over congressional intent. The administration has weaponized the bureaucratic approval process to effectuate policy goals in contravention of the law.
Through various statements — that pocket rescissions have historical precedent, or that the ICA is unconstitutional, GAO is irrelevant, and laws getting in the way of presidential intent can be ignored — Vought has signaled that only his interpretation of the Constitution matters. He is trying to return to the absolute monarchical governance of Charles II, whose defiance of Parliament on military spending inspired the framers of the U.S. Constitution to wall off the power of the purse from the Executive branch. As Daniel wrote last summer, Vought has been telegraphing this plan all along. The details that Vought and some House Republicans are raising like the constitutionality of the ICA or the erroneous notion that GAO impoundment investigations are partisan attacks are just bad-faith pretexts for an Executive branch power grab over spending, as this newsletter warned was the MAGA intent in March.
The judiciary has begun to chip away at Vought’s gambit, most recently with a district court ruling that pocket rescissions are illegal. Nonetheless, we have little faith in the courts willingness, inclination, or ability to protect Congress's powers in the short term. In the long term, our reactionary Supreme Court combined with continuous replacement of the federal judiciary with Trumpian judges makes them a Maginot Line for defending the Constitution against Trump's blitzkrieg.
As a matter of law, federal employees are prohibited from spending funds not appropriated by Congress and can suffer administrative and criminal penalties under the Antideficiency Act. But in an executive branch where lawlessness flows from the top down, we can expect an erosion of that reluctance, especially as GAO, a watchdog for the ADA, is undermined.
A possible short-term FY2026 spending deal that includes approval of the Senate’s version of the full-year Legislative branch appropriations bill would plant a flag for congressional autonomy. GAO would get another year to counter OMB (it’s worth noting that a Democratic amendment to create an inspector general position at OMB failed in a House Appropriations Committee markup), and Congress would avoid collateral damage of slashing GAO’s budget in half, as the House has proposed.
GAO has provided the nation $1.45 trillion in savings since 2002. It consistently returns more than $120 in benefits for every dollar appropriated to it. GAO was, in the words of Rep. Pat Fallon, “DOGE before DOGE or DOGE was cool” through its regular auditing of Treasury systems for improper and excessive payments, which in FY2024 amounted to $162 billion. But the head of GAO's 15-year term ends in December and the White House has not been shy about reaching into the Legislative branch of government. GAO's independence will depend in large part on whether the Senate confirms only leadership that is truly independent and waits out any other nominees who do not measure up.
More spines in the Senate appear to be straightening because of Vought’s pocket rescissions gambit. Sen. Lisa Murkowski declared her strong objection to the seizure of $5 billion from the State Department and USAID as “unlawful.” She, Majority Leader John Thune, and a few others admitted the rescissions issue was damaging their efforts to keep the appropriations process on track and bipartisan. Rescissions and impoundments destroy the incentives for Congress to do the hard political work to reach an agreement on federal spending. This isn't just an effect of Vought's actions but one of his goals.
Democrats are correct in arguing that there’s little point in negotiating appropriations packages when the White House can ignore any agreement. Language protecting Congress would have to be inserted into any appropriations bill along with an agreement among members of Congress to protect the spending process.
Without such assurances, forcing a shutdown would be a last-ditch but principled move to defend Legislative branch authority. Democratic leadership has been very reluctant to trade any political penalty (no matter how minimal) associated with a shutdown for refocusing politics on the slide toward autocratic rule. The worm may be turning in elite democratic thought: Ezra Klein made the case in Sunday’s New York Times for why Senator Schumer should desist from partnering with Senate Republicans to fund the government, explaining why he views now as different from March’s Continuing Resolution, when Schumer gave Trump a lifeline. If Schumer hasn’t come up with a plan by now, Klein writes, “then Democrats need new leaders.”
University of Michigan's Don Moynihan argues we have already fallen into a competitive authoritarian system. Democratic party leaders are running out of high-leverage moments in which to slow the slide. As Matt Glassman writes, "Congress should call the administration’s bluff and have the big fight" over whether the laws they write are worth the paper they’re written on. Matt's a really good poker player; Congress should take his advice.
NOMINATIONS
Republican Senators are discussing a potential "reinterpretation" of nomination process rules to allow voting en bloc on nominations instead of one at a time. Doing so would require reinterpreting the rules through a simple majority vote, aka “going nuclear.” Given the folks the Senate has confirmed so far, from Vought to RFK Jr., do we really want the Senate to do less vetting and go faster? If Thune wants more confirmations, he could also have the Senate work on Fridays.
One of the many annoyances of going nuclear is that the written rules of the Senate don't change, just how they're interpreted. So what do those rules say? As Ringwiss points out, the Senate hasn’t published a revised book of precedents, which it requested in 2006.
It’s unlikely that the Senate will advance any nominee to replace Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook until the judiciary determines if her (pretextual) removal from office was legal. Sen. Thom Tillis said he would not vote to advance a replacement out of the Banking Committee, which would need his vote to do so.
FACTIONS
An interesting bipartisan mix of House members introduced a long-awaited compromise bill to ban individual stock trading by congressional officeholders and their immediate family members. Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett also joined the announcement, even though Burchett has his own bill which Luna has threatened to introduce via discharge petition.
If the bill succeeds – and the Senate remains an obstacle – it would be a rare example in recent Congresses of a cross-factional coalition advancing legislation on a topic with overwhelming public support. Consider it another advantage of the majoritarian nature of the House.
Cross-factional work is also advancing on something completely different: the release of the Jeffrey Epstein criminal case files. Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna’s bill forcing the Justice Department to release the files needs only two more signatures to reach the discharge petition threshold and receive a floor vote. They may have to wait for several special elections in Democratic-heavy districts for the final few sign-ons as Republican leadership has warned its members not to join. Reps. Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert have signed.
Massie also said that he and Taylor Greene would read a list of former Epstein clients compiled by survivors of his sexual abuse into the congressional record because they are exempt from retaliatory lawsuit via the speech or debate clause of the Constitution.
Seven Republicans broke with a House Freedom Caucus-led effort to censure Rep. LaMonica McIver and remove her from the Homeland Security Committee last week. Five voted to table the measure and two voted present. McIver was arrested by federal officers during an attempt to inspect an immigration detention facility in Newark, as is her legal right.
In both the stock trading and Epstein matters, a bipartisan coalition threatens to do what Republican leadership hates the most: lose control of the floor.
We took the way in which Rep. Jim McGovern spoke of some of his Republican colleagues’ behavior to Greg Sargent as another data point that members who are not fully MAGA need to consider electoral reform as a way to save their skins. McGovern noted Republican members whom he “used to be able to work with in a bipartisan way, who always seem reasonable on stuff and could be depended [sic] on to do the right thing occasionally” no longer do because “they’re all afraid of being on the wrong side of this president’s favor” and drawing a primary challenger. He added Republican colleagues admitted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was “terrible” and would hurt their constituents, but supported it anyway.
The standard for MAGA loyalty has become so high that practically no member can fake it long enough to survive. Short of a dramatic political fall for Trumpism, the only sustainable path for such members is to change the nature of how the House organizes itself and break out of the primary system that reinforces political conformity, which a multimember system would allow.
ODDS AND ENDS
C-SPAN streaming: C-SPAN’s channels finally are breaking out of cable-only access and will be available on the basic subscription package of YouTube TV and on Hulu’s live tv package. C-SPAN has had a YouTube channel since 2005, which includes House committee and floor proceedings.
Although this is a welcome development, it’s no substitute for a comprehensive video library created by Congress itself. C-SPAN committee proceedings are subject to copyright, and it doesn’t cover every committee proceeding. The Senate has made progress by posting its recent historical committee proceedings on congress.gov
Hackathon: Don’t forget to register for the Congressional Hackathon 7.0 on September 17. People interested in attending the morning coding session can register at this link.
USCP DEI RIP: After pressure from Sen. MarkWayne Mullin, the Capitol Police has shuttered its diversity, equity, and inclusion office. Hundreds of black Capitol Police officers have sued the department since 2001 for racial discrimination and workplace environment. Although more than half of the Metropolitan Police Department is black, only 33% of USCP officers are.
Bizarro time: The House voted to authorize a new select committee to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. It will be chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who was a point of focus for (perhaps unwittingly) giving a tour of the Capitol Complex on January 5th to one of the insurrectionists. The panel has the president’s support and apparently will be allowed to investigate the original January 6 committee.
FOIA: The recently-retired head of NASA’s FOIA office gives insight into strengthening the Office of Government Information Services at the National Archives, where she also worked.
House spending data: The second quarter’s statements of disbursements are available as PDFs and CSVs.
Home rule rollback: A bill that would make the DC attorney general a presidential appointee instead of a local elected official is one of 14 home rule-related measures House Republicans are considering.
Zombie campaign cash: Money from dead members’ campaign funds is finding its way to covering expenses and paying their survivors. The MERIT Act, proposed in 2014, would have prohibited such self-dealing in election funds for members living and dead.
The First Branch Forecast is a production of the American Governance Institute. Chris Nehls is the primary author and Daniel Schuman is the editor.
The “National Conservatism Conference” comes out of the national conservatism movement. According to Wikipedia, national conservatism “is a nationalist variant of conservatism that concentrates on upholding national and cultural identity, communitarianism and the public role of religion.” It’s ideology: “National conservatism focuses on ‘threats to moral order and the loss of moral bearing due to liberalism's relativism.’ It rejects the basic precepts of enlightenment liberalism, such as individualism and the universality of human rights. In America and Europe, national conservatives are majoritarian populists and advocate for fewer limits on the power of elected representatives to ‘smash the liberal state.’ It opposes modernity, liberalism, and anarchism, instead valuing Europe’s Christian heritage and "defending" Western civilization.