White House budget director Russ Vought said Tuesday that the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal grant approval process won’t undermine lawmakers’ ability to direct cash to specific projects back home.
“Sometimes you have an earmark to a specific person or a specific organization, and that would probably be at the top of the list that needs to be funded,” Vought told House appropriators during a morning oversight hearing.
The White House proposed changes last month that would put political appointees in charge of approving or scrapping funding awards to community groups, education institutions, state and local governments and nonprofit organizations. But projects Congress orders the Trump administration to fund through so-called earmarks are “not something that is impacted by this grant rulemaking,” Vought said.
Congress enacted thousands of earmarks, worth almost $16 billion, under the government funding bills cleared over the last year. After Republicans swore off earmarks for more than a decade beginning in 2010, many lawmakers in both parties see their return as a way to protect their power to dictate how federal dollars are spent as the Trump administration continues to withhold, cancel and shift billions of dollars Congress has approved elsewhere.
The window for public comment will close in less than two weeks for the rule change the White House proposed in late May following President Donald Trump’s executive order to that end last summer.
“Probably record numbers of comments have come in. We’re going to assess each one of those comments and make any changes that we need to,” Vought said, explaining that the overall goal is to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent in a way that is “aligned with the president’s agenda, as he got elected on behalf of the entirety of the American people.”
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