Trump budget director faces bipartisan heat in Senate on DOGE cuts
White House budget chief Russell Vought faced heat from both sides of the aisle Wednesday as he sought to make the case to senators to pass the administration's roughly $9 billion in proposed cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting funds.
Vought testified before the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee to defend the special request from the administration, which was approved by the House just weeks ago.
The testimony comes amid mounting scrutiny over the administration's sweeping operation to shrink and reshape the federal government. Just as Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was set to testify on Wednesday, a group of protesters disrupted the meeting and appeared to shout, 'Vought lies, people die.'
In his opening remarks, Vought touted the proposed cuts as a reflection of the administration's 'steadfast commitment to cutting wasteful federal spending antithetical to American interests.' He pointed to funding for items like 'LGBTQ advocacy in Uganda,' 'transgender people, sex workers and their clients in Nepal' and 'LGBTQ activism.'
'Most Americans would be shocked and appalled to learn that their tax dollars, money they thought was going to medical care, was actually going to far-left activism, population control and sex workers,' Vought said. 'To be clear, no lifesaving treatment will be impacted by this rescissions package.'
But lawmakers on both sides have pushed back on the scope of the proposed cuts, arguing that examples like those shared by Vought and other Republicans to make the case for the rescissions package wouldn't be funded under the Trump administration.
'There's no way that President Trump's administration would allow such wasteful and questionable spending,' Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Vought.
'So, I am puzzled why you would be cutting funds that the president signed in March as part of the continuing resolution,' she continued, referring to funding legislation Trump signed in March to keep the government open through September.
Vought responded that the funding being targeted is 'largely multiyear funding,' and that 'there is some expiring funds with regard to fiscal year '25, but the way that this was structured was to find the waste.'
'We are $37 trillion in national debt,' Vought said. 'Our view is to see, when we look at these programs, can we do it cheaper, as evidenced by what we find, and then to reflect that, with some savings to the taxpayer.'
Collins also raised concerns about the administration's proposed cuts targeting the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and what they could mean for preventative efforts, as well as what 'the impact would be on the maternal and child health programs.'
'These are not only the right thing to do for humanitarian reasons, but they're incredible instruments of soft power,' she said, before asking Vought if the administration looks to cut the 'lifesaving multivitamins for pregnant mothers and the food supplement that's used for malnourished children.'
Vought said that there'd be $10 billion left for PEPFAR if the rescissions package were to pass but questioned the scope of preventative care, while pointing to funds for items recruiting 'gender and inclusive development experts' and another '$45 million to International Planned Parenthood Federation.'
Collins countered that 'those kinds of wasteful expenditures are not going to occur in this administration.'
'That's my whole point,' she said, while also pointing to worries among 'the private foundations that are contributing to the undertaking of this program that they're going to expire because they can't get the federal funding to distribute them.'
The Trump administration is calling on the GOP-led Congress to approve $8.3 billion in cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and foreign aid, and more than $1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides some funding to NPR and PBS.
Democrats have come out in strong opposition to the plan, raising the alarm over how the process could make it harder for both sides to strike a bipartisan funding deal for fiscal 2026.
'What we are here today talking about is one party rescinding funding provided with 60 votes with just a simple majority,' Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said. 'And if that becomes the new normal for how this body operates, that is going to make appropriations bills extremely hard to negotiate.'
The hearing also got tense at one point when Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) grilled Vought over the dismantling of USAID.
'This resulted in the sudden collapse of malnutrition programs, malaria programs, AIDS and HIV programs,' he said, while asking Vought how he felt 'being responsible for hundreds of thousands of children dying because of your sudden interruption in these key programs.'
Vought said in response that he rejected 'that assertion' and that 'every administration has the ability to do a programmatic review when they come into office.'
While Republicans in both chambers have expressed support for targeting funds that go to NPR and PBS, both outlets they've accused of harboring political bias, there are GOP members in both chambers who have voiced concerns about the potential impact cuts would have on local stations and rural radio.
'We have Native American radio stations in South Dakota. They get their funding through NPR,' Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said during the hearing. 'Ninety-some percent of what they use.'
'These are the folks that put out the emergency notifications. They talk about community events and so forth, but they're in very, very rural areas where there simply isn't any economy to support buying advertising on these stations,' Rounds said. 'They will not continue to exist if we don't find a way to take care of their needs.'
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) said she is 'very concerned also about the emergency alerts that come to many places in Nebraska, only through that rural radio.'
'We're a state of vastness, very sparsely populated areas that don't receive cell service,' she added. 'It's difficult even with landlines in many areas of my state.'
Vought committed to working with the senators to address the matter while also noting the proposed rescissions request focuses on advanced appropriations and not current funding. But some Republicans have still raised concerns about what the cuts would mean for local stations in the next fiscal year.
Under the rescissions process kicked off by the White House, Republicans could claw back funds previously approved by Congress without Democratic support — and they likely would need to in order to secure passage. Zero Democrats also voted in favor of the package of cuts when it was considered in the House earlier this month.
Despite some concerns shared by the GOP side regarding the package, many Republicans have expressed support for it.
While Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who heads the subcommittee that crafts annual State Department funding, said he will 'continue to support PEPFAR' during the hearing, he also said he will vote for the rescissions package
'You know, I'm going to vote for it just as a statement that PEPFAR is important, but it's not beyond scrutiny, that the way you run the government has consequences,' he said.
After the hearing, reporters asked Collins for the next steps for the package.
'It is likely to go directly to the floor,' she said when asked about whether the committee will vote on changes to the package. Some members are expecting tweaks will be made to the plan in the coming weeks.
'I want to see fundamental changes in the package, and I'm already working on a substitute,' she also said.
It's been decades since Congress has approved such a request to yank back funds previously greenlighted by lawmakers. Trump tried to use the same process to rescind funds in his first term but was unsuccessful, despite Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House at the time.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Two of the administration's primary targets have already been subjected to treatment that wildly exceeds reasonable and lawful oversight. In a March 25 letter to Columbia, the Trump administration demanded not only that the university 'complete disciplinary proceedings' related to campus encampments, but that it impose a minimum penalty of expulsion or multiyear suspensions. But what if, in a given case, a one-year suspension is most just? The administration told Columbia to 'centralize all disciplinary processes under the Office of the President.' What statute empowers it to dictate how administrators and faculty divide power? It demanded that the institution 'formalize, adopt, and promulgate' a definition of anti-Semitism, as if institutional neutrality about that topic of debate is somehow at odds with Title VI. Most strikingly, it ordered Columbia to begin 'placing the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership' for five years, a flagrant intrusion on faculty governance and academic freedom. In an April 11 letter to Harvard, the Trump administration made at least one legitimate demand––that the university comply with the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling that its admissions office cannot discriminate on the basis of race. But the administration also made demands that ought to be beyond the state's purview. Harvard was ordered to reduce 'the power held by students and untenured faculty' in its governance. It was told to pay for an external anti-Semitism audit that would list faculty members who discriminate against Jews so that they can be punished. Yet the next paragraph of the letter demanded that Harvard shut down all DEI initiatives. The letter even seeks to micromanage student groups; funding decisions 'must be made exclusively by a body of University faculty,' it states. Harvard has rejected these demands in court filings, and it is suing the administration to stop it from enforcing the letter's terms. Still, the overall effect of the administration's enforcement is aptly summed up by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. In an amicus brief supporting Harvard's lawsuit, the organization declared that the state's 'coercion of Harvard violates longstanding First Amendment principles and will destroy universities nationwide if left unchecked.' An aggressive regime of civil-rights enforcement is easy to defend in theory. Without bureaucrats focused on the obligations that colleges have under Title IX and Title VI, institutions can neglect the statutory rights of students. Federally dictated policies and procedures can enhance consistency and impartiality. Investment in the Office of Civil Rights and campus-compliance structures can reduce sexual assaults and bigoted harassment. And penalties can be meted out justly to particularly bad actors. But that isn't how the civil-rights regime that arose in 2011 has worked in practice. Listen: Why Trump wants to control universities The new Title IX bureaucracy cost colleges hundreds of millions of dollars to implement, from 2011 to 2016. And for all the bureaucracy's illiberal excesses, colleges ultimately reported an overall increase in forcible sex offenses during the same period. Meanwhile, policy making through the bureaucracy rather than Congress sowed dysfunction, with appointees of different presidents imposing wildly different, sometimes contradictory, accounts of what the law required, such that satisfying one administration got you in trouble with the next. Similarly dismal results are likely as the Trump administration applies the Title IX playbook to Title VI. There is no reason to assume that Jewish students will be better off if colleges comply with every Trump-administration dictate. As Republican administrations used to understand, intense bureaucratic attention to a problem doesn't automatically improve it. And often, state coercion can invite state abuses, yield unintended consequences (see the Israeli students who will have to leave Harvard if Trump succeeds in banning foreign students), and crowd out better solutions. Returning to pre-2011 norms would be better than the status quo. But at this point, an act of Congress might be the only way to stop what one attorney has called the 'regulation by intimidation' that threatens higher education. Congress could clarify what Title IX and Title VI require of colleges, in particular establishing that colleges can never be punished by the administrative state for allowing speech protected by the First Amendment or extending due-process rights to accused students that they would enjoy in a court of law. It could raise the bar for launching an investigation. It could afford colleges more due process before penalties are imposed. And it could silo penalties, so that violations in one part of a university, such as the law school, do not threaten another part, such as a cancer-research center. Many kinds of reform are possible. It is, in any case, unsustainable for colleges to be micromanaged by rival factions of coercive ideologues. Yet many Trump critics are still focusing on his administration's glaring procedural violations, rather than the enforcement model that underlies them. Even if Trump's team were as procedurally diligent as its predecessors (a low bar), the overly aggressive approach to civil-rights enforcement that began in 2011 and persists today would serve academia ill. Civil-rights enforcement on campuses has mutated into something with costs that outweigh its benefits.
