{"id":788,"date":"2026-07-06T12:36:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T07:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=788"},"modified":"2026-07-06T12:36:04","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T07:36:04","slug":"vought-claims-omb-wont-try-to-force-congress-to-approve-more-rescissions-this-year-but-leaves-door-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=788","title":{"rendered":"Vought Claims OMB Won\u2019t Try to Force Congress to Approve More Rescissions This Year \u2014 But Leaves Door Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n\r\n<br><div id=\"article-content\">\n            \n\n\n\n\n<p>House Democrats grilled Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought about his refusal to release appropriated funds in a timely manner during his Tuesday morning testimony in front of the House Appropriations Committee\u2019s Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHave you released all appropriated funding to each intended agency through the apportionment process?\u201d House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) asked Vought during the hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<!-- \/wp:post-content -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cWe are working through the apportionment process expeditiously. I can\u2019t say we have done every single one of them but if you have one that you are particularly interested in \u2014\u201d Vought responded as DeLauro cut him off.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cIt is your responsibility to get the money out of the door in a timely fashion, and if you can\u2019t do this, we need to take a look, because Congress provides the authority for this,\u201d DeLauro said.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>DeLauro\u2019s questioning comes as the Trump White House\u2019s OMB has been sitting on billions of dollars of congressionally appropriated funds for the current fiscal year, refusing to apportion and send them out into the agencies in a timely manner \u2014 including for life-saving programs. It\u2019s a pattern the White House has followed since the beginning of President Trump\u2019s second term: tramplingCongress\u2019 power of the purse by refusing to spend federal funds in the manner Congress appropriates them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cHow much funding has been made available? How much funding have you made unavailable to agencies as of today? If you can\u2019t answer that now, I would like an answer to that,\u201d DeLauro continued.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cHappy to, but again, there\u2019s no concerted effort not to apportion funding for the agencies,\u201d Vought responded.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not going out in a timely way,\u201d DeLauro pushed back.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cIn part, because we\u2019re trying to assess what it\u2019s being spent on,\u201d Vought said.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>The purpose of apportionment is to make sure there is a controlled release of funds to agencies and to ensure money is not going out to agencies too fast or too slow. But OMB is instead sitting on appropriated money for long periods of time in order to investigate, they claim, what it\u2019s being spent on \u2014 but without following the legal avenue for such a process.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cThere is a process to defer or pause money legally and they are simply not taking it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>What they are doing is illegally deferring it,\u201d Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at Center for American Progress, told TPM.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cWill you commit to us here today that you will carry out our spending laws as Congress intended through appropriations and reconciliations as they were enacted or not?\u201d DeLauro asked.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cObviously, we will \u2026 make sure that we\u2019re spending money where you intend us to spend money, at the same time, I\u2019m not gonna take any tool off the table,\u201d Vought said while DeLauro interrupted, saying she takes that as a \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>DeLauro, seemingly less than happy with Vought\u2019s answer to her question, later added: \u201cThe Constitution says that the appropriations process is the power of the purse. You are ignoring that. You flout the Constitution every single day and you have been doing it for the last year and a half \u2026 we\u2019re not going to continue to allow that to happen. No president has the right to just violate the United States Constitution, and no member of this committee does that, but the administration is doing it regularly.\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), another member of the appropriations committee, also pushed back on Vought around the same issue, asking about millions of dollars that have been appropriated by Congress but not released for the The President\u2019s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program, as well as global health and development programs.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cI think there\u2019s $3.2 billion that came from funds here marked by Congress for global health and development programs,\u201d Pocan said, adding that those have been unobligated. \u201cIf it\u2019s not obligated by September, that money will expire and can no longer be spent. Is that going to be spent? That money, it\u2019s not going to be done as a pocket rescission?\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not going to take any two off the table, but we have no plans to do a rescission at this point, and we will make sure that we are getting the money out the door expeditiously,\u201d Vought responded.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>The Trump White House, of course, forced congressional Republicans to <a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/news\/republicans-pass-trumps-rescissions-package-blindly-letting-exec-branch-claw-back-billions\" target=\"_blank\">authorize a rescissions package<\/a> last year and championed a <a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/news\/the-trump-admin-gets-ready-to-seize-congress-power-of-the-purse\" target=\"_blank\">pocket rescissions<\/a> package, which the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found to be outside of the law. And despite Vought\u2019s insistence to the contrary on <a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/news\/he-just-lied-to-america-russ-vought-denies-violating-impoundment-laws-prompting-sharp-response\" target=\"_blank\">several occasions<\/a>, under his leadership, the OMB and the Trump administration were found repeatedly to have impounded federal funds approved by Congress, as documented in <a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/news\/one-agency-has-been-calling-out-trumps-illegal-impoundment-that-may-soon-change\" target=\"_blank\">several decisions<\/a> from the legislative branch\u2019s GAO.\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>It\u2019s part of a broader trend of Trump II as Trump and his administration officials take a sledgehammer to the separation of powers and pressure congressional Republicans into ceding their authority over federal spending to the executive branch.\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->          <\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n    window.fbAsyncInit = function() {\n      FB.init({\n        appId: \"101800829865996\",\n        xfbml: true,\n        version: ' v2.6'\n      });\n      window.fbAsyncInit.__didInit = true;\n    };\n    (function(d, s, id) {\n      var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\n      if (d.getElementById(id)) {\n        return;\n      }\n      js = d.createElement(s);\n      js.id = id;\n      js.src = \"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\";\n      fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\n    }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));\n  <\/script>\r\n<br><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>House Democrats grilled Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought about his refusal to release appropriated funds in a timely manner during his Tuesday morning testimony in front of the House Appropriations Committee\u2019s Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee. \u201cHave you released all appropriated funding to each intended agency through the apportionment process?\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2284040710.jpg?w=804","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}