The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) may not be as well known as Cabinet agencies like the Departments of Justice or Treasury. But despite its relatively low profile, OMB is critically important to any administration’s success in implementing a President’s agenda. OMB is the central coordinating body within the executive branch, a key player in an admin’s fiscal, regulatory and operational processes.
OMB’s mission can be broken down into three buckets: fiscal execution and oversight, regulatory analysis, and ensuring that the operational needs of the federal government are met. As our Jeff Hauser has argued, OMB’s regulatory arm (the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)) has typically been used by corporations so that they “can win many regulatory battles by simply generating a lot of paper purporting to show that regulations would be expensive to implement.” In other words, Vought and his OIRA subordinate can return to OIRA – radically improved upon by Joe Biden after progressive activists like RDP made it a priority – can and likely will make the environment and workplace safety and the like much worse in order to make big corporations a bit more profitable.
Additionally, as part of their fiscal oversight duties, the OMB requires federal agencies to submit budget requests, which OMB then reviews and uses to develop its own agency budget proposal. OMB’s proposals are then submitted to Congress by the President, which in turn divides the budget among its committees of jurisdiction and creates its own budget that is voted on and later signed into law by the president.
But to really understand OMB’s power, we have to read between the lines of that budget process. Appointees at OMB are able to review agency budget proposals with an eye toward what they, the OMB appointees, believe the agencies should be proposing, even if the agencies might not agree. Now, imagine what a hawkish, hyper-originalist, self-described Christian Nationalist would do with the power to reshape federal agency proposals however he sees fit.
Unfortunately, we don’t have to imagine – Trump has nominated Russell Vought, who previously led OMB, to head the agency once again.
After the last Trump Administration, Vought spent his time leading a far-right Trump-aligned think tank, the Center for Renewing America, which is known for such kind proposals like utilizing state war powers to tackle the border crisis, fighting the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and supporting measures to suppress the vote. Vought is also one of the authors of Project 2025 – he wrote the chapter on the executive office, where he implies that the President should be an entity with total power akin to that of a king.
While Vought headed OMB under the first Trump admin, he spent his time writing budgets that cut social programs like the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides federal assistance to cover utility costs for low-income families, and Head Start, and which provides nutritional assistance for low income children. These provide the most vulnerable Americans with the resources they need to survive. As the Trump Administration decides how to pay for the extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts – and potentially expanding them – it is clear that Vought will have significant influence to push the cost onto those least equipped to pay it.