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Russ Vought Wrecks CNN’s Dana Bash in Budget Showdown — Says Trump Has Constitutional Tools to SLASH Federal Workforce Without Congress

June 2, 2025

Appearing on State of the Union Sunday morning, President Trump’s former OMB Director and top budget strategist Russ Vought demolished the corporate media spin that only Congress can green-light Trump’s game-changing federal workforce cuts.

Vought dropped a constitutional truth bomb: Trump doesn’t need Congress to gut the bloated, woke federal bureaucracy—he already has the executive tools to do it.

Dana Bash clumsily invoked the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, attempting to trap Vought with the tired claim that Congress alone controls the purse strings. But Vought, unfazed, counterpunched with constitutional clarity and historical context.

When Bash tried to smear Vought as cruel for wanting to “traumatize” federal workers, Vought turned the tables—exposing the rot at the heart of the bureaucracy.

Transcript:

Dana Bash: Let’s talk about the budget. That was the budget to come, but I want to talk about what has been going on with DOGE and what Elon Musk has already done. He says it was $175 billion in cuts, and these are cuts to funding and programs that Congress already passed—already signed into law, the law of the land—before you took office. You say that you’re going to submit about $9 billion in cuts this week for Congress to approve, to make those cuts that you’ve already done official, largely in foreign aid and public broadcasting. But you’re hearing from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle that they want you to submit approval for all of the cuts that you’ve done through DOGE. Will you?

Russ Vought: We might. We want to see how this first bill does. We want to make sure it’s actually passed. It’s the first of many rescissions bills. We may not actually have to get Congress to pass the rescissions bills. Why? Some we have executive tools. We have impoundment—that for 200 years, presidents had the ability and the recognition that they had the ability—to spend less than the ceiling. If you have $100 million that Congress says, “We want you to go and use for a particular use,” and you can do it for less, for 200 years that was totally appropriate. Since the 1970s, that has changed and has led to massive waste, fraud, and abuse.

Secondly, the very Impoundment Control Act itself allows for a procedure called pocket rescissions later in the year to be able to bank some of these savings without the bill actually being passed. It’s a provision that has been rarely used, but it is there, and we intend to use all of these tools. We want Congress to pass it where it’s necessary. We also have executive tools, and that is something we’re going to be working with Congress on. But it’s very important to pass this bill and to see whether there is a will on both the House and the Senate to secure the vote for it.

Dana Bash: Let me just unpack a couple of things that you said. First, you said that there is 200 years of precedent of presidents taking what Congress passed. And of course, people who are watching this know that the Constitution says that it is Congress that has the power of the purse, which is why we’re even having this discussion.

Russ Vought: They have the power.

Dana Bash: Well, that’s what I want to ask you about. So there’s some dispute about the 200 years. But most importantly, a law passed in 1974 because of this dispute that you mentioned—the Impoundment Control Act. And so, because of that law, which has now been in place for more than 50 years, it is the requirement of the executive branch—except for in situations where you’re having discussions with Congress—to implement what is signed into law. I know you don’t believe that that is constitutional. So are you just doing this in order to get the Supreme Court to rule that unconstitutional?

Russ Vought: We’re certainly not taking impoundment off the table. We’re not in love with the law. It’s the law that came after 200 years of precedent and history, at the lowest moment of the executive branch. But even the very Impoundment Control Act—notice it’s not called the Impoundment Elimination Act—even Congress at the time realized that impoundments were perfectly legal and appropriate. They were saying the Impoundment Control Act. Even the Impoundment Control Act allows for procedures that both require their assent on a rescissions bill—that’s the one that we’re sending up early this week—and also allow for pocket rescissions for those that come later in the next week.

Dana Bash: Congress says that you’re just breaking the law.

Russ Vought: Well, they’re wrong. We are not breaking the law. Every part of the federal government—each branch—has to look at the Constitution themselves and uphold it. And there’s tension between the branches. I don’t doubt that Congress is going to make accusations. Some of them come by their own watchdogs, but those watchdogs have been historically wrong. And that’s not going to stop us from moving forward to bank the DOJPAs.

Dana Bash: I want to bring this up in a bigger picture, because this is part of a very clear strategy that you have had for years and years in order to really cut the federal government and do it in any way you can—and also to pull as much power into the executive branch as possible. You’re very open about that. One of the things that you said in 2023 was specific to federal workers. I want to play that for our viewers.

Russ Vought (Flashback): We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma.

Dana Bash: Is that your goal as OMB Director?

Russ Vought: Look, I love how you cherry-picked the quote on “trauma.” What I was referring to there was the bureaucracy. We do believe there’s a weaponized bureaucracy. We do believe that there are people who have been part of administrations that are fundamentally woke and weaponized against the American people. When you have the EPA put a 77-year-old Navy veteran named Joe Robertson in jail for doing ponds to fight wildfires on his lawn—that’s not just the FBI, it’s the EPA. And we do want to defund and put those bureaucracies out of business.

But I have great people at OMB. There are great people at the FAA. There are great people at the NIH who are doing hard work and important public service activities. I think it’s important to provide the full context of what people like me have said in the past. But we’re not going to receive pushback from the notion that we’re going to dramatically change the deep, woke, weaponized administrative state.

Dana Bash: Again, you’ve been very, very open about that being your goal. That’s what we have seen.

WATCH:

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