During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) confronted OMB Director Russell Vought over his agency's control of congressionally appropriated funding.
00:00The chair now recognizes Ms. DeLauro, ranking member of the full committee, for five minutes.
00:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:06Just very quickly, we really do need to do all of what you've sent up.
00:10Director Vogt, after an appropriation is enacted, the first thing that happens is before an agency can deliver the promises to the American people is OMB has to make funding available through a legally binding decision known as an apportionment.
00:24In essence, you are the first and sometimes biggest bureaucratic hurdle that stands between American taxpayers and the services, support, and protections they have promised in spending laws.
00:34And for over 100 years, apportionments were secret.
00:38Reiterate, these decisions were effectively laws that you and your also unelected predecessors made whenever you liked without accountability or transparency.
00:46I fought on a bipartisan basis, bicameral basis, alongside members of this subcommittee for four years to change that.
00:54We enacted simple transparency requirements because this committee and the Congress need information to effectively legislate.
01:01Independent watchdog organizations deserve the information to help the American public understand how your decisions affect their lives.
01:09Three, most importantly, the American taxpayers are entitled to see how you, your predecessors, and every OMB director, how you come, how you are spending their money.
01:20My question is, you do not think, Director Vogt, that Congress deserves to know how you carry out the laws that we enact.
01:30You do not believe that American taxpayers deserve to see how you spend their money.
01:35Do you?
01:36No, I don't think that characterization is true.
01:38We do.
01:38It's one of the reasons why we come up to the Hill and testify and we explain our decisions.
01:43We believe that apportionments are legally binding but not final agency actions and that it is part of a predecisional deliberative process on behalf of the executive branch to be able to manage agencies and the programs therein.
01:58And what we found in the last four years in which the law that you worked hard to put into place that we have constitutional concerns about is that it actually degraded the oversight responsibilities that OMB had in that the people would actually change.
02:14Excuse me, Mr. Director, because my time is running out.
02:17You know, in all fairness, I had this debate and discussion.
02:21I'm not just having it with you.
02:23I had a debate and discussion on this with your predecessor and others with the same argument and so forth.
02:29The American people, the Congress who legislate and acts the laws, has to have the ability to understand what you're spending, how you're doing it, at what intervals, and so forth.
02:41And also, let me just say, this requirement, as I say, was debated for four years, including with you specifically during your prior tenure as OMB Director.
02:50Your predecessor, your predecessor did comply with the law for over two years, and you followed this law for two months.
03:00What happened?
03:01Why did the website come down?
03:04Why do we not know what is happening?
03:07Why are we going back to those days of secret decisions being made by you and whomever else in terms of the spending of the dollars that we constitutionally enact here when we put these bills into law with congressionally directed resources that serve the American people?
03:30Tell me what happened.
03:31Tell me what happened.
03:32Why did you change what you were doing for two months or what your predecessor was doing over the last couple of years?
03:39Well, we had constitutional concerns with the provision.
03:41We had a veto threat against this provision in the first term.
03:45If it was presented while the president was still in office, I expect you would have had a signing statement that said, not unlike our letter to the committee, not unlike the DOJ's letter to the committee, we have constitutional concerns with it.
03:59And it's something that degraded our ability to manage taxpayer resources and do the very response.
04:05We passed a law, and with all due respect, again, I think the level of your honesty on your claims really shines through on this topic, and there probably isn't much more point in discussing it.
04:17But that goes at the very fact you make up constitutional issues, where the Constitution places that power of the purse within this body and within an appropriations committee.
04:34Historically, it is there.
04:36But you make a decision as to what you want to do, what you think is constitution or not constitution, without any basis in fact, thereby pulling down that website that allows us to see what you are doing.
04:52And we have no way of knowing if you are carrying out what we have lawfully, lawfully required the executive branch to do.
05:08That is our responsibility, and your responsibility is to carry out what it is that we have appropriated here.
05:18You just can't pick and choose whatever the hell you want, and going forward, and I yield back the balance of my time.
05:25Chair now recognizes Mrs. Hinson for her five minutes of questions.
