DeLauro Takes Vought to Task: “You envision a King unbound by laws.”

***WATCH RANKING MEMBER DELAURO’S OPENING STATEMENT***

WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) delivered the following remarks at the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee’s fiscal year 2026 budget hearing for theOffice of Management and Budget (OMB):

Thank you, Chairman Joyce and Ranking Member Hoyer, for holding this vital hearing.

Director Vought, good afternoon. Welcome back to the House Appropriations Committee. I thank you for appearing before us today.

The Office of Management and Budget is perhaps the most critical agency that most people have never heard of. I know you know this well, Mr. Vought. But that is no excuse to thwart and otherwise ignore the law. In the United States of America, if you disagree with a law, you have every right to urge that the law be changed. You can petition or meet with lawmakers, and you can wage a campaign in the court of public opinion. You can run to become a lawmaker yourself.

What disagreement with the law does not confer is license to ignore the law, to flagrantly violate the law, and to act as though you are completely above the law.

This Administration, instead of being laser-focused on the cost of living crisis, it is actually making that cost of living crisis worse, and it has put billionaires in charge of the government, and has filled the ranks of civil servants with political allies. 

For the sake of eliminating accountability and cutting taxes for billionaires, this administration is unlawfully impounding or stealing funds and dismantling agencies, depriving the American people of the programs and services which Congress has created, authorized, and appropriated funds for. 

You posit yourself a defender of everyday Americans, and a champion for restoring an imagined version of America you consider morally and virtuously superior to the country we actually live in. I do not believe your actions, which are inflicting direct harm on the people you claim to support, is in any way reflective of righteous values, or of America’s constitutional tradition. 

You support autocracy, not restrained or limited government. You have shown nothing but utter disregard and disrespect for this committee, for Congress as a whole, and for the laws that we have enacted. 

When the President named you to re-take this position, he said that you would, quote, “return self-governance to the people.” 

Yet, you have demonstrated contempt for American taxpayers by gleefully ignoring lawful requirements to provide them, and their elected representatives in Congress, the most basic information as to how their tax dollars are being spent.

During your current tenure, the President has yet to submit a full budget – when it finally arrives you will have led the most delayed Presidential transition for any OMB in history. Despite your shortcomings at OMB, you fashion yourself the Acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You have been very busy there, but so far, your biggest achievement has been increasing at least 45 million Americans’ credit card bills by hundreds of dollars annually by reinstating predatory fees. 

You have ignored requests from this Congress for information. You stood up the Republican leadership of this Committee – several of whom are here today –  and you have mocked the Government Accountability Office for affirming what everyone in this room understands to be true: you are unlawfully impounding or stealing congressionally-appropriated funds.

Director Vought, the Constitution confers the power of the purse – the power to make appropriations in law – to the Congress. It is right there in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7. The Courts have repeatedly ruled that there is no inherent authority for the President to impound funds. 

The late Justice Antonin Scalia, not a liberal torchbearer, proudly proclaimed as much in reference to the Supreme Court’s decision in Train v. City of New York. 

Justice Kavanaugh, then for the D.C. Circuit, wrote and I quote, “even the President does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend.” 

And Chief Justice Roberts, during his time at the White House Counsel’s office, stated, and I quote, “no area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse.”

Let me just go back to our founding fathers on Congress’ power of the purse, to Alexander Hamilton, and I quote: “where the purse is lodged in one branch, and the sword in another, there can be no danger.”

You are not just on thin legal footing, Director Vought. You are living in a legal and historical fiction. You envision a King unbound by laws, who rules by decree, who accepts lavish gifts from foreign governments, who fills public offices with ultrawealthy and political allies, and who expels opposition and crushes dissent. 

This view of presidential authority could not be more un-American, and more dangerous to our constitutional order. 

You contend that there are over 200 years of historical practice to support your position – this is a lie and fiction. I have reviewed your pseudohistory, and nearly every instance you claim supports your position of a President-King unbound by the American system of checks and balances, is either irrelevant, or an exercise of discretion explicitly granted by the Congress in law. 

Presidential impoundment power is a myth. You do not just have to take my word for it; the Constitution, courts, the Government Accountability Office, and American history tell us you are breaking the law. 

Through the OMB funding freeze, which touched communities nationwide, you have attempted to seize control of the government and impound funds far beyond what is permitted by law. 

And in venues across the country, the courts have broadly, unequivocally, told you ‘no.’ You do not have the authority. You cannot unilaterally freeze funding across the government that has been appropriated by Congress. 

The courts are making clear that you grossly overstepped your authority. You have had your day in court, and the courts have rebuked you, they have said “no, no, and no.”

But of course, none of this is surprising. Project 2025, which you co-authored, laid out your blueprint for concentrating absolute power, not just in the White House, but in your own hands. 

Your colleagues – Secretaries and heads of major agencies – have testified before us in the last several weeks to exactly this point: Your office has promoted your own goals over and above the people President Trump has hand-picked to run his administration.

You have also said you want to traumatize federal employees – civil servants – as if inflicting trauma and creating a culture of fear and doubt will somehow make this government more efficient. 

Be honest, Mr. Vought.This was never about government efficiency. In fact, an efficient government – a government that capably serves the American people, and proves good government is achievable – is what you fear the most. 

You want a government so broken, so dysfunctional, so starved for resources, so full of incompetent political lackeys and bereft of experts and professionals, that its departments and agencies cannot feasibly achieve the goals and the missions to which they are lawfully directed. Your goal is privatization and for the biggest companies to have unchecked power; for an economy that does not work for the middle class, for working and vulnerable families. 

You want the American people to have no one to turn to but the billionaires and corporations this Administration has put in charge.

Waste, fraud, and abuse are not the targets of this Administration – they are your primary objectives. 

I thank the Chair, and we look forward to your testimony.

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