'It Is Not Helpful': Deb Fischer Presses Russell Vought For A Full DoD Budget After Waiting Months

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During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing Wednesday, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) questioned OMB Director Russell Vought about when Congress would get a budget request from the Department of Defense.

Transcript

00:00Madam Chairman, my apologies for being late and then being in and out. We had

00:04some armed services meetings and some interviews with nominees and voting,

00:10so back and forth. Welcome, Mr. Boat. Nice to have you here.

00:17Is that you? No. I can't tell. It's been all hearing.

00:21As a senator who's on appropriation and also on the authorizing committee of

00:27armed services, I can attest that the budget justification documents that

00:33provide us with the granular program level information, they are immensely

00:39important to building these annual bills. Congress has been waiting over four

00:44months for the department's budget justification books. Fiscal year 2026, it

00:51starts in just three months. The budget information provided to Congress for the

00:56Department of Defense, sir, which accounts for over half of all discretionary

01:01spending. So far, that amounts to just a table of contents. It is not helpful.

01:08These delays by OMB have impeded our work on our annual bills and complicated our

01:14ability to deliver timely funding for fiscal year 2026. Going forward, I hope that you

01:23and your team will work with us and communicate more clearly so that we can work together, so

01:31that we can get the information needed from you, and so that we can work on our

01:37responsibilities and better serve the American people. I look forward to doing that.

01:42Absolutely, Senator. We are working very diligently to clear as many congressional

01:50justifications as we possibly can. I get a daily update on this right now. I assure you it's not

01:56all OMB. We are working expeditiously to get this thing up to you as much as we possibly can.

02:02Great, because we're going to be starting our NDAA work on armed services very, very soon, and it would be

02:10helpful as an authorizing committee to be able to have information. Now I'm also going to talk to you

02:17about rural radio and the emergency alerts that we get on that. You've heard from a number of my

02:26colleagues about the issues they have on the emergency alerts on the tribal needs that many of

02:34us have in our states with that, but I am very concerned also about the emergency alerts that come

02:45to many places in Nebraska only through that rural radio. We're a state of vastness, very sparsely

02:53populated areas that don't receive cell service in many cases. It's difficult even with landlines

03:01in many areas of my state. Would you also commit to working with me to figure out if we are going to

03:12need some replacements for this so that all Americans, no matter where they live, will be able to have access

03:21to these alerts? I know you committed to work on the tribal issues, but I am also concerned about

03:27emergency alerts. Absolutely, Senator. Thank you, sir. I would hope that we can figure out who's going

03:36to carry out those responsibilities if these stations end up being shuttered. As the administration

03:45decided on the proposed rescissions, can you walk us through OMB's consultations

03:55with the State Department and also with the Department of Defense specifically on preventing

04:02China, which this administration rightly considers our pacing threat from exploiting any gaps that may

04:11occur due to those rescissions? How did you do it? Thank you for the question, Senator. You know,

04:17we worked in close collaboration with the State Department on this, with the Department of Government

04:23Efficiency. Originally, this was pure waste, fraud, and abuse with basically no policy reductions.

04:33Where you see the policy reductions are in things like World Health Organization,

04:36and some of the international organizations that we fund that are both voluntary and assessed.

04:46And so whatever you see is the example is we have over an annualized basis, we've identified waste and

04:55abuse and things that are actively harming our foreign policy. This would do nothing to impact our ability

05:02to respond to our adversaries. Thank you. And Madam Chair, I would just ask for one more question.

05:10Thank you. I believe that we need to have constructive reorganization of our federal agencies. I believe

05:19that we must have good stewardship of taxpayer dollars. However, I have had outreach from a number of Nebraska

05:31law enforcement about a proposed transfer of the HEIDA funding to the Justice Department. And they're

05:37concerned that a transfer of those funds would undermine their very important efforts that they use those

05:46funds for with with drug task force and their regional task forces to counter that drug traffic

05:53trafficking. I've seen firsthand how important this funding is, especially in the panhandle of Nebraska.

06:01Have you consulted with any state or local law enforcement about that recommendation from OMB,

06:09and have you heard concerns from constituents like mine? Senator, we have not heard concerns.

06:15I can go back and double check the extent to which we had stakeholder involvement as we crafted that budget.

06:21Again, it's it's a shift to a department that does grant making. And so we've we've had a long concern

06:30the extent to which the EOP is in the grant making business that it probably doesn't have the skills to

06:36do that. So we don't really view this as in any way reducing our support for law enforcement at all.

06:43That's a common theme throughout our budget, but I will go back and check on our stakeholder engagement on that.

06:50Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Madam Chair.

06:52Thank you, Madam Chair.

06:55Senator Assa.

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