The addition of Russell Vought to head the Trump budget team demonstrates a serious effort to cut government
“Donald Trump is a big government Republican”, remarked a Trump-doubting family member, someone who argued passionately in the middle of 2023 that all conservative politics observers needed to do whatever they possibly could to ensure that someone other
than Trump won the 2024 party nomination.
This particular person was not what I would call a Never Trumper, but someone who believed to his very core that the former president was not electable because of what happened in the waning days of Trump’s first administration. While hardly averse to voting for the lifetime real estate developer/tabloid celebrity/reality TV star if he succeeded in winning the GOP nomination, this skeptical soul said he would do so and then find something else to occupy his attention in his free hours.
In other words, said political participant would completely give up on politics.
I’m guessing there were a lot of Americans similarly inclined regarding the just concluded election and its candidate choices. Conservatives loved much of the MAGA platform and its chief promoters, yet there were many, myself included, who doubted Trump’s willingness to actually take a slash and burn attitude towards reducing the size of government itself.
Donald J. Trump wasn’t a Tea Party-type when he ran for office, winning the 2016 nomination much the way he did in 2024 – which was essentially by promising to restore America’s border sovereignty, cut taxes and be a ready participant in the nation’s culture war – which many of us concluded was a near-lost cause because of recent gains by opportunistic liberals on a number of fronts.
But with Trump’s transition moves regarding DOGE and the late addition of budget guru Russell Vought – who also served in the first Trump go ‘round – has the president-elect revealed his true self at last?In an article titled, “‘Slash and burn’: Trump’s budget chief shows ‘total’ commitment to shrinking government”, Christian Datoc reported at the Washington Examiner recently:
“President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Russell Vought as the incoming administration’s budget chief illustrates Trump’s ‘total’ commitment to curbing government spending and eliminating waste, according to allies.
“Trump nominated Vought to serve as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, the same post he held for the latter part of Trump’s first year in office, dubbing him an ‘aggressive cost cutter and deregulator.’ ‘Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,’ Trump wrote when announcing Vought’s selection. ‘We will restore fiscal sanity to our Nation, and unleash the American People to new levels of Prosperity and Ingenuity.’
“At OMB, Trump world figures say, Vought will serve as Trump’s ‘right-hand man’ inside the White House when it comes to trimming the federal government’s topline budget while still pursuing costly policies like a national deportation agenda.”
Deportation, deportation, deportation. Yes, it will cost taxpayers a boatload of money to right the wrongs of the Biden administration’s lax illegal immigration policies, but it’s a price the majority of Americans are willing to suffer. Government already spends so much on expenditures with questionable constitutional ties. Deporting illegal aliens is a core duty of the president. Why wouldn’t he be justified in outlays to bring the result about?
As everyone knows, Trump tried desperately to build a southern border wall in his first administration. Simple logic suggests if he were successful back then, the sheer number of alien newcomers would’ve been much, much reduced now. “Pay me now or pay me later” is the old FRAM oil filter commercial refrain. Why didn’t we just get improvements done then in Congress?
Democrats in Congress – and amnesty-loving establishment Republican senators – wouldn’t agree to basic tradeoffs Trump offered so as to get immigration reform done. Anyone remember the “four pillars” of immigration in 2017?
A lot of conservatives wouldn’t have been satisfied with Trump’s plan, but the idea was a true compromise in every sense of the word.
At any rate, having Russell Vought’s watchful eyes keeping track of the nation’s purse strings starting next year will definitely be a huge improvement over the current Democrat administration. Conservatives have long argued government spends too much, which only leads to massive amounts of waste and fraud. No sane person would deny there aren’t many, many areas that can’t be cut severely or eliminated outright.
Anyone who’s worked in government at any level understands, just by observation and experience, that there’s a big problem with accountability and enforcement in the bureaucracy. Resistance to attempts to make government great again will be fierce, and it won’t be pretty. How many times will Democrats demagogue the issue… about how the poor will suffer? Or that Republicans are taking food out of the mouths of children (or more like bureaucrats)?
Russell Vought is just the kind of man Trump needs in his new administration, a steel-spined conservative who ignores the whiners and gripers to get positive things accomplished. Even before he takes office, again, Trump is putting the people in place to implement the MAGA agenda.
Trump is living his “true self” by placing emphasis on cutting government
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t Democrats champion human beings who live out their “true selves” when they identify as transgenders or other adherents to the LGBTQIA+++ “community”?
If Trump now hangs out with the small government folks, doesn’t that make him one of them/us? At the same time, if Trump has experienced a sudden conversion to the liberty cause, wouldn’t it make him a passionate advocate for small government as well?
One of the chief complaints from Never Trumpers and anyone-but-Trump separatists (same thing?) in the 2024 primaries was that Trump wasn’t a principled conservative and his populism-oriented message wouldn’t satisfy fiscal watchdogs. In saying so, the boobirds implied Trump was a big government proponent, a man who was “for” everything involved with spending and reluctant – at best – to get rid of bloat.
How? It’s a well-known fact Trump isn’t for entitlement reform. The mere suggestion of imposing caps on growth or reducing benefits to bring the huge programs into balance was met with a firm rebuke from the candidate/president. Democrats often accused Trump of desiring to cut Medicare and Social Security, a standard attack that didn’t have any connection to reality.
The same worries persist, though Trump clearly hopes to achieve improvements in reducing the budget by trimming the government, getting rid of multiple departments/agencies and slashing government payrolls by hundreds of thousands if not millions of bureaucrats. If you fire the regulation writers, wouldn’t you need fewer bodies to enforce the rules?
Vivek Ramaswamy’s and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and placing Russell Vought in charge of what government spends will act as a two-pronged fat reducing pincer. The more eyes we have on what the federal departments spend, the greater will be the benefit.
Congressional conservatives will finally get help from the Executive branch
Regardless of whether Trump and Vought and Ramaswamy and Musk succeed, the growing number of budget-conscious conservatives in the administration will finally receive help from the executive himself. Senators like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have been voices in the wilderness over the years attempting to limit what the government spends.
They aren’t appropriators or earmark takers. They care about the future of the country.
Now there will be a real emphasis on trimming government. It’s long overdue. Congress will need all the voices to support the efforts of Trump’s team. It must be a whole of government effort. Will we get it?
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