Senate Republicans push ahead on Trump budget pick Russell Vought

By Bo Erickson and Gabriella Borter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate Budget Committee will move ahead on confirming President Donald Trump’s pick for budget chief Russell Vought despite calls from top Democrats for a delay after an order halting all federal grants and loans.

“The Senate Budget Committee will proceed with Mr. Vought’s nomination as scheduled,” the spokesperson for the committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Lindsay Graham, said in a statement.

Top Democrats on the chamber’s appropriations and budget committees on Tuesday called for a delay after the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget ordered federal grants and loans to be “temporarily paused” until a spending review takes place.

OMB said that pause was meant to give time to determine if the funding programs fall in line with Trump’s executive orders on foreign aid and climate change, as well as the reversal of “woke gender ideology” and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The budget committee is set to meet again on Thursday to consider Vought’s nomination to lead OMB, as he did in the first Trump administration.

Top panel Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley noted that Vought in past testimony had refused to say whether he believed OMB needed to comply with a 1974 law banning “impoundment,” an attempt by a president to block congressionally-authorized spending.

“Russell Vought refused to answer many questions about his plan, particularly to say he would not use the illegal impoundment strategy,” Merkley told a press conference.

In his recent two confirmation hearings before Senate committees, Vought repeatedly said he believed the impoundment law was unconstitutional, an opinion that even the Republican committee chairmen said they did not fully support.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter, Rick Cowan and Bo Erickson; editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)