President Donald Trump’s nominee for the No. 2 post at the White House budget office told lawmakers Wednesday that the administration will stop federal cash from flowing to “divisive ideologies” under new grant rules in the works.
Hal Duncan, who is seeking Senate confirmation to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said during his confirmation hearing that the White House will ensure federal grants are aligned with Trump’s priorities by changing the way more than $1 trillion is approved each year.
“The ultimate deciders of these grants will be the political employees at the agencies,” Duncan noted in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The White House proposed changes last month that would put political appointees in charge of blessing or nixing awards to state and local governments, community groups, education institutions and nonprofit organizations. The result, Duncan said, will be that the administration will more easily head off fraud and no federal dollars will go to “divisive DEI ideologies, woke gender ideologies, illegal immigration.”
The administration is expected to finalize these plans as soon as this summer.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) touted the proposal as a way to ensure federal money goes to “things that President Trump actually ran on — his causes.”
But Democrats are raising concern that the Trump administration will use the new approval process to deny federal support for groups or governments that don’t boost Trump.
“That really sounds to me like you all are trying to turn the entire federal government into this one big slush fund to reward those aligned with the administration and punish everyone else,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, told Duncan on Tuesday, during his first confirmation hearing before the Budget Committee.
Both committees must vote in the coming weeks to advance Duncan’s nomination to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote by the full chamber. He is already serving in the role as acting deputy director.
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