Senate Democrats are calling on Republicans to postpone committee action on Russ Vought, the president’s pick for White House budget director, after the office he is seeking to lead released a memo Monday night ordering a freeze on “all federal financial assistance.”
“I am urging Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, a fellow appropriator, to hold Russ Vought’s nomination that was supposed to occur this Thursday,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, at a press conference Tuesday morning. “Republicans should not advance that nomination, out of committee, until the Trump administration follows the law.”
Murray, who also sits on the Budget Committee, is appealing to Graham, a South Carolina Republican, as a senior member of the panel who might ordinarily be concerned with efforts to restrict Congress’s “power of the purse.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), another appropriator and ranking member on the Budget Committee, said the postponement should be for two weeks, “until we answer these questions and resolve this constitutional crisis.“
The Senate Budget Committee is the second committee with jurisdiction over Vought’s nomination. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has already voted to send Trump’s pick to run the Office of Management and Budget to the Senate floor.
Vought, who served as OMB director during the first Trump administration, is under scrutiny among Democrats for his past support for seeking to restrict spending congress has already approved.
“The Budget Committee will proceed with Mr. Vought’s nomination as scheduled,” a committee spokesperson said in a statement.
