During a House Appropriations Committee hearing earlier this month, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) spoke to OMB Director Russ Vought about the power of the purse.
00:00Thank you Mr. Hoyer. I now recognize the Ranking Member of the full committee, Ranking Member DeLauro, for her opening remarks.
00:07Thank you. Thank you Chairman Joyce and thank you Ranking Member Hoyer for holding this vital hearing.
00:13Director Vogt, good afternoon. Welcome back to the House Appropriations Committee and thank you for appearing before us today.
00:21The Office of Management and Budget is perhaps the most critical agency that most people have never heard of.
00:30I know you know this well, Mr. Vogt, but that is no excuse to thwart and otherwise ignore the law.
00:38In the United States of America, if you disagree with a law, you have every right to urge that that law be changed.
00:48You can petition or meet with lawmakers and you can wage a campaign in the court of public opinion.
00:57You can run to become a lawmaker yourself.
01:02What disagreement with the law does not confer is license to ignore the law, to flagrantly violate the law,
01:13and to act as though you are completely above the law.
01:18This administration, instead of being laser focused on the cost of living crisis,
01:25it is actually making that cost of living crisis work worse.
01:31And it has put billionaires in charge of the government and has filled the ranks of civil servants with political allies.
01:40For the sake of eliminating accountability and cutting taxes for billionaires,
01:46this administration is unlawfully impounding or stealing funds and dismantling agencies,
01:55depriving the American people of the programs and services which Congress has created, authorized, and appropriated funds for.
02:04You posit yourself a defender of everyday Americans and a champion for restoring an imagined version of America you consider morally and virtuously superior to the country we actually live in.
02:19I do not believe your actions, which are inflicting direct harm on the people you claim to support,
02:25is in any way reflective of righteous values or of America's constitutional tradition.
02:33You support autocracy, not restrained or limited government.
02:38You have shown nothing but utter disregard and disrespect for this committee, for Congress as a whole, and for the laws that we have enacted.
02:48When the President named you to retake this position, he said that you would, quote,
02:53return self-governance to the people, end quote.
02:58Yet, you have demonstrated contempt for American taxpayers by gleefully ignoring lawful requirements to provide them and their elected representatives in Congress the most basic information as to how their tax dollars are being spent.
03:15During your current tenure, the President has yet to submit a full budget.
03:20When it finally arrives, you will have led the most delayed presidential transition for any OMB in history.
03:27Despite your shortcomings at OMB, you fashion yourself the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
03:34You have been very busy there, but so far your biggest achievement has been increasing at least 45 million American credit card bills by hundreds of dollars annually by reinstating predatory fees.
03:49You have ignored requests from this Congress for information.
03:53You stood up the Republican leadership of this committee, several of whom are here today.
04:00And you have mocked the Government Accountability Office for affirming what everyone in this room understands to be true.
04:07You are unlawfully impounding or stealing congressionally appropriated funds.
04:13Directive vote, the Constitution confers the power of the purse, the power to make appropriations in law to the Congress.
04:22It is right there.
04:24It's Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7.
04:27The courts have repeatedly ruled that there is no inherent authority for the president to impound funds.
04:33The late Justice Antonin Scalia, not a liberal torchbearer, proudly proclaimed as much in reference to the Supreme Court's decision in train versus City of New York.
04:46Justice Kavanaugh, then for the D.C. Circuit, wrote, and I quote,
04:50Even the president does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend.
04:56And Chief Justice Roberts during his time at the White House Counsel's Office stated, and I quote,
05:01No area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse.
05:08Let me just go back to our founding fathers on the Congress's power of the purse to Alexander Hamilton.
05:15And I quote,
05:17Where the purse is lodged in one branch and the sword in another, there can be no danger.
05:24You are not just on thin legal footing, Director Vogt.
05:28You are living in a legal and historical fiction.
05:32You envision a king unbound by laws who rules by decree, who accepts lavish gifts from foreign governments,
05:39who fills public offices with ultra-wealthy and political allies, and who expels opposition and crushes dissent.
05:47This view of presidential authority could not be more un-American and more dangerous to our constitutional order.
05:54You contend that there are over 200 years of historical practice to support your position.
05:59This is a lie and fiction.
06:01I have reviewed your pseudo-history, and nearly every instance you claim supports your position of a President King,
06:08unbound by the American system of checks and balances, is either irrelevant or an exercise of discretion explicitly granted by the Congress in law.
06:16Presidential empowerment power is a myth.
06:19You do not just have to take my word for it.
06:22The Constitution, the courts, Government Accountability Office, and the American history would tell us you are breaking the law.
06:28Through the OMB funding freeze which touched communities nationwide, you have attempted to seize control of the government and impound funds far beyond what is permitted by law.
06:38And in venues across the country, the courts have broadly, unequivocally told you, quote, no.
06:44You do not have the authority.
06:46You cannot unfreeze unilaterally funding across the government that has been appropriated by the Congress.
06:52The courts are making clear that you grossly overstepped your authority.
06:57You have had your day in court, and the courts have rebuked you.
07:01They have said no, no, and no.
07:03None of this is surprising.
07:05Project 2025, which you co-authored, laid out your blueprint for concentrating absolute power, not just in the White House, but in your own hands.
07:13Your colleagues, secretaries, and heads of major agencies have testified before us in the last several weeks to exactly this point.
07:21Your office has promoted your own goals over and above the people President Trump has handpicked to run his administration.
07:28You have also said that you want to traumatize federal employees, civil servants, as if inflicting trauma and creating a culture of fear and doubt will somehow make this government more efficient.
07:38Mr. Vogt, be honest, this is never about government efficiency.
07:42In fact, an efficient government, a government that capably serves the American people and proves good government is achievable, is what you fear the most.
07:50You want a government so broken, so dysfunctional, so starved of resources, so full of incompetent political lackeys and bereft of experts and professionals,
08:00that its departments and agencies cannot feasibly achieve the goals and the missions to which they are lawfully directed.
08:06Your goal is privatization for the biggest companies to have unchecked power for an economy that does not work for the middle class, for working and vulnerable families.
08:16You want the American people to have no one to turn to, but to the billionaires and the corporations this administration has put in charge.
08:23Waste, fraud, and abuse are not the targets of this administration. They are your primary objectives.
08:31I thank you, and I thank the chair for his indulgence, and we look forward to your testimony.
