OMB Director Vought Grilled On Big, Beautiful Bill's Impact On Deficit Spending And National Debt

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On Sunday, OMB Director Russell Vought spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper.

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00:00In addition to Murkowski skeptical of this, you need Democratic votes to keep the government

00:05open in a vote coming up in September.

00:08Are you worried at all about blowing up the appropriations process?

00:12We've already heard Democrats say we can't, you know, their perspective is we enter into

00:17a back and forth, we get an appropriations bill, and then the Trump administration comes

00:21in and undermines the concessions that we got, and it just blows up the whole thing.

00:25No, we're not worried about that at all.

00:27Obviously, the introduction of rescissions is new muscle memory, but it's something

00:32that rescissions were done very commonly, 70s, 80s, the first part of the 90s.

00:36This is not something the appropriations process has never handled before.

00:40The appropriators want a scenario where we propose cuts, and they use that in their bills

00:46to then pay down for higher levels of spending.

00:49We're $37 trillion in debt.

00:51We actually have to have a dollar of cut go to a dollar of deficit reduction.

00:55That's really what this is about, and we ultimately think it makes the appropriations

00:59process work better because you can then have bipartisan votes on top-line levels, and

01:04if an agency comes along and says, look, we're finding waste and garbage that the taxpayers

01:09wouldn't want to spend, then we can send those up for rescissions.

01:12Even with the deficit, addressing the deficit in this new bill, the one big, beautiful bill

01:19act, the deficit is still, the debt is still projected to climb $25 trillion over the next

01:2510 years.

01:26And there's some criticism from conservatives at the Manhattan Institute, for example, saying

01:30that Doge is just what they call spending cut theater going after, quote, culture war totems.

01:36Their argument is basically if you really wanted to cut spending, if you really wanted to get

01:40the deficit and the debt under control, you should be going after bigger areas such as

01:44the defense budget.

01:45What's your response to that criticism?

01:46I think it's unfair criticism.

01:48I think you've got to take a multifaceted approach.

01:51The one big, beautiful bill reduces deficits.

01:54It had $1.5 trillion in mandatory reforms.

01:57Those are the structural programs.

01:59But, I mean, the GAO and the CBO says it's going to actually increase the deficit because

02:04of...

02:05No, CBO was using artificial baselines that treat spending as eternal and tax relief that

02:11was in law since 2017 to be temporary.

02:14And so if you adjust for that, and the bill does have additional tax relief, of which we

02:19paid for with spending reductions, this bill reduces deficits and will help us with the

02:24national debt.

02:25Overall, the moves that we are making as an economic team under President Trump's leadership

02:31will lead to about a third of what's necessary to balance the budget given the numbers that

02:35you've just articulated.

02:37That's just in our six months.

02:38When you talk about the tariff revenues that are coming in, $3 trillion, CBO believes the

02:42same numbers that we have, and again, those are in advance of a number of the trade agreements

02:48that we're talking about over the next several weeks.

02:50So we're making big moves, and I think the country is going to come alongside of us and see

02:54the progress that we're making.

02:55Quick...

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