U.S. Senate Democrats to remain on floor overnight denouncing Trump budget nominee

by Jennifer Shutt, Florida Phoenix
February 5, 2025

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats plan to give a series of floor speeches overnight Wednesday to highlight their opposition to President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

The tactic will keep the chamber’s staff working all night, though it won’t delay a final confirmation vote from taking place on Thursday evening.

It also isn’t likely to sway at least four Republicans to vote against Russ Vought’s confirmation, the minimum number needed to reject a nominee in the chamber controlled by the GOP.

Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, kicked off the speeches in the middle of the afternoon, saying that Vought is “Donald Trump’s most dangerous nominee.”

“This man is incredibly dangerous to the foundations of our Republic — the system of laws and the checks and balances of our Constitution,” Merkley said. “And when you put into the Office of Management and Budget an individual who willfully avoids and rolls over the laws of the country and says he will not abide by the separation of powers — that is a fundamental danger that all of us having taken an oath to the Constitution must stop.”

Impoundment advocate

Vought served as deputy director, acting director and then director of OMB during Trump’s first term in office.

Vought later launched a conservative-leaning think tank called the Center for Renewing America that has published repeatedly during the last few years on the idea that a president can refuse to spend money Congress has appropriated. Vought also wrote the chapter in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation conservative agenda, on the executive office of the presidency.

A refusal to spend appropriated funds is barred under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which lawmakers passed after then-President Richard Nixon balked at spending billions in federal funding that Congress had approved.

Vought said during his confirmation hearing that he expected to challenge the constitutionality of the law once confirmed by the Senate.

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

The issue is expected to lead to lawsuits that would likely make it to the Supreme Court.

OMB memo

The Trump administration has already raised alarms for members of Congress from both political parties over the separation of powers, especially after the acting OMB director released a two-page memo in late January calling for a freeze on grant and loan funding.

That memo led to considerable confusion throughout the country about which programs were impacted by the halt, which were not and whether the executive branch actually had the power to simply refuse to spend money Congress approved on a bipartisan basis.

That memo was rescinded in less than two days, during which time two lawsuits were filed.

The two federal judges have since approved separate temporary restraining orders to prevent the Trump administration from implementing the core elements of the funding pause proposed in that memo.

Senators weigh in

Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said if confirmed, Vought will “trample all over the separation of powers, will ignore the authority of Congress and will hurt the American people by holding back funds they rely on.”

“Just look at what happened last time Russ Vought served as director of the OMB,” Murray said. “He tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral authority he does not possess to hold up security assistance to Ukraine and override the spending decisions of Congress.”

Murray urged her Republican colleagues to vote against Vought’s confirmation, saying it wouldn’t make sense for them to confirm “someone who does not respect the constitutional authority of the Senate.”

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith said her opposition to Vought becoming OMB director centered around the separation of powers in the Constitution that gives Congress control over government spending decisions, also referred to as the power of the purse.

“These ideas are dangerous, they are unconstitutional and they are already hurting real people,” Smith said. “The funding freeze that was announced last week is straight from Russell Vought’s 2025 plans and that is one of the many reasons that I’m going to be opposing him when we vote on this ultimately tomorrow.”

Smith said the funding freeze memo was to “test out Russell Vought’s extreme and dangerous ideas and see how far they can take it.”

Every Democrat to speak

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said that during the 30 total hours of debate that began around 1p.m. Eastern Wednesday, almost every Democratic senator will give a floor speech explaining why they oppose Vought’s confirmation as OMB director.

“If confirmed the director of OMB, Russ Vought may well be the most important man that no one’s ever heard of,” Schatz said “Under normal circumstance the OMB directors are powerful, but kind of anonymous because they’re responsible for technical things, nerdy things — developing and implementing the entire federal budget and they advance the priorities of the president.”

“But Russ Vought wants to go way beyond that. He wants to take an agency that people outside of Washington haven’t even heard of and turn it into the nerve center and power center of the federal government,” Schatz said. “He wants to consolidate power at OMB in such a stark and sometimes illegal way that he alone will get to decide who deserves the government’s help and who doesn’t.”

Last updated 5:03 p.m., Feb. 5, 2025

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