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RUSS VOUGHT’S SCHEME HAS BEEN UNMASKED  
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Rosa DeLauro
September 16, 2025
The American Prospect
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_ Hundreds of billions in appropriated spending has been withheld,
with dire consequences. Government funding shouldn’t be derailed
like this. _

OMB Director Russ Vought arrives to testify before the Senate
Appropriations Committee on the rescissions package, June 25, 2025, at
the Capitol in Washington, J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

 

The courts have decided: Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Director Russ Vought broke the law. The American people deserve to
know how their tax dollars are being spent, but time and again, Russ
Vought hides the truth.

During the Biden administration, I led the charge to require the
public disclosure of legally binding funding decisions known as
apportionments. When I drafted this requirement—and it was signed
into law—it was not about which party held power. It was about
showing the American people how their hard-earned taxpayer dollars are
being spent in their communities.

On March 24, at Russ Vought’s command, OMB illegally removed this
transparency website. At the end of July, United States District Judge
Emmet G. Sullivan emphatically ruled that Vought has been illegally
hiding his sabotage of investments and services for over four months.
The courts continued to deny OMB’s request to keep hiding their
stealing, with a panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit forcing Russ Vought to restore the website on August
15 with equally forceful criticism of his lawlessness. While OMB was
slow to share the information, and they have yet to post all that is
required under the law, one thing is clear: Russ Vought and his
relentless desire to single-handedly control every investment in
American communities have been unmasked.

Vought is raising costs by halting federal assistance that would bring
down prices and make everyday life easier for families.

The Vought agenda is Project 2025. Vought was the lead author of this
radical manifesto, developed in secret, which embraces the starvation,
and ultimately privatization, of government. In public polling, more
than half of the people surveyed
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can see the Project 2025 agenda being carried out, even though fewer
than 1 in 7 Americans support it
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It is no wonder that those who have heard of Vought’s agenda
disapprove of it. Like its predecessors, it is filled with
embarrassing legal theories and anti-constitutional lawbreaking and is
wreaking havoc on American families. Time and again, Vought has
violated the law and ignored the courts and nonpartisan government
watchdogs to hide what he is doing.

We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, and Americans are
demanding relief. But Vought is raising costs by halting federal
assistance that would bring down prices and make everyday life easier
for families. For example, Russ Vought’s funding freezes have
prevented over $25 billion in Department of Energy funding from being
used to reduce utility costs and consumer prices through improvements
to the electric grid and rebates that would be paid directly to
American households.

Americans deserve cures and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s
disease, ALS, diabetes, mental health issues, and maternal mortality.
But Vought has tried to hide his cuts and halted lifesaving work for
research, treatments, and cures. That’s right—Russ Vought said no,
and so he froze $15 billion
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in lifesaving biomedical research.

American children and their parents have seen their class sizes grow,
and their teachers remain overworked and underpaid. The Vought agenda
doubles down on these concerns and cuts federal assistance from
classrooms. Instead of working to ensure every child has access to a
high-quality education, Russ Vought hid his decision to block nearly
$7 billion
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in funding owed to every state in the country to help school districts
across the country plan for the upcoming school year. That money was
released after weeks of bipartisan outcry, but with little time left
before the end of the year, officials must now race to get it to the
intended recipients.

America’s farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses need assistance to
help solve on-farm resource issues related to air and water quality,
ground and surface water conservation, soil health, and mitigation
against drought and increasing weather volatility. But Vought
nickel-and-dimes American farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses. He
blocked the payment of over $800 million in funding owed
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to rural small businesses and farmers.

America’s veterans and their families need reliable and responsive
access to the services and benefits that they have earned. But Vought
wants to hide the alarming degree to which he is gutting the
capability of government to provide services at the Department of
Veterans Affairs, which expects to cut 30,000 employees
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by the end of this year.

These cases are not just one-offs. They are part of Vought’s much
larger effort to steal from the American people. Vought’s thefts of
appropriated spending total over $410 billion
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since President Trump returned to office, as I along with my colleague
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) have been able to uncover. Tens of billions
of that funding will expire on September 30 and will be lost forever
unless a law can be enacted to save it.

How has he wrested this authority? By hiding funding decisions he is
required by law to share. Vought thinks Congress and the American
public have no right to know what he is doing, even as courts continue
to disagree.

Vought’s latest assault on the constitutional order is pending
before the Supreme Court: He is currently freezing almost $5 billion
in lawfully enacted appropriations and has made clear
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release them until they are past the point where they can be used for
their intended purposes. This is illegal. Nonpartisan experts at the
Government Accountability Office clearly said so in 2018, and
reiterated the same last week. I continue to fight to make this clear,
and have presented this argument directly to the Supreme Court
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to make sure they hear that Congress believes these actions are
unlawful, a viewpoint shared by myself, Republican Sen. Susan Collins
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(R-ME) and Sen. Murray
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(the two leaders of the Senate Committee on Appropriations), and the
Republican dean of the House, Rep. Hal Rogers
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(R-KY; the longest continuously serving member of the House of
Representatives).

Sunlight alone will not stop OMB’s unlawful behavior, and that is
why it is time for OMB to have a dedicated and full-time inspector
general.

While he often operates under the radar, Russ Vought has been
unmasked. The American people have learned who he truly is.

We can defeat Russ Vought’s attempts to centralize and hide power
for himself over all others. His actions during President Trump’s
first term helped motivate the Congress to require OMB’s legally
binding budget decisions to be public, and I strongly believe that his
desire for total control has only gotten worse during this
administration. He has made clear that sunlight alone will not stop
OMB’s unlawful behavior, and that is why it is time for OMB to have
a dedicated and full-time inspector general. Trillions of hard-earned
taxpayer dollars are at stake, and we cannot allow an agency with
access to all of that money to operate in the shadows.

I want to lower the cost of living for all American communities and
deliver critical services and investments to the working class, the
middle class, and the vulnerable. That victory can be achieved through
bipartisan cooperation to pass annual funding bills—signed into law
by President Trump—that ensure elected representatives’
commitments to their constituents are fulfilled.

But Russ Vought wants to prevent that. Make no mistake: Every illegal
action he takes is designed to make sure his vision comes to pass. He
is poisoning negotiations—illegally canceling hundreds of billions
in already promised assistance for our communities, families, and
children.

As the courts have determined, Americans deserve to know who Russ
Vought is and what he is doing with their money. They deserve to know.
Light has now been shed on Russ Vought’s actions, and it is now time
to install a dedicated watchdog to increase oversight and
accountability for him and the Office of Management and Budget.

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Rep. Rosa DeLauro serves as ranking member of the House Appropriations
Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and
Related Agencies Subcommittee. She represents Connecticut’s Third
District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

* Russ Voight; Office of Budget and Management; Appropriations;
Trump Agenda;
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