Transcription: Russell Vought On

The following is the transcription of an interview with Russell Vought, director of the White House Administration and Budget Office, which was issued in “Fac The Nation with Margaret Brennan” on July 27, 2025.

Margaret Brennan: We start today with the director of the Office of Administration and Budget of the White House, Russell Vought, welcome to ‘Fac the Nation’.

Director of the Russell Vought Management and Budget Office: Thank you for having me.

Margaret Brennan: There is a lot to get to you. Let’s start with what is happening with the Federal Reserve. If you take the president in his word, he does not intend to say goodbye to the president of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, although he still criticizes him. What is the president in a successor when his mandate ends in May 2026?

Vourud: Well, I think he is looking for a president who is not continuously too late for developments in the economic market. And I think what we have seen with President Powell, arrived very late to the Biden Administration to increase rates, to articulate the concern regarding the Biden administration spending. We all knew abroad, even Larry Summers knew we were going to have a problem regarding inflation. And we saw, you know, recent historical inflationary levels that we had not seen before. And now it is too late to reduce inflation rates, and that is the kind of things we want to see in the next president of the Federal Reserve. And one of the reasons is …

Margaret Brennan: -More an focus on inflation?

VOUGHT: – -BANT is the ability to recognize developments in the economic market. In this case, we want to see lower rates and have the ability to start the economy. And one of the things we saw with Powell is that one of the reasons why he arrived so late was because he did not understand that inflation is largely a monetary phenomenon. He kept saying that inflation was transient. He did not address the problem, and now it is, again, too late, and you get married with the mismanagement of Fed. It is a big problem with which we are trying to raise the level of consciousness of the country.

Margaret Brennan: But as you know, the Fed is structured in a way in which it has no unilateral control. There is a Governing Board. Others weigh. You worked in the 2025 project, and we returned and looked at what they said there about the Fed. As people can know, that is a product of the Heritage Foundation that obtained a lot of scrutiny during the campaign. The Fed chapter asked the Congress to review the approach and powers of the Fed. Is that what you are looking for in 2026?

Vourud: I don’t even know what that chapter says. Everything I know, in terms of the president, the president has executed on an agenda. It has been very clear about it. All we are doing is, in this administration it is running, it is implementing its agenda.

Margaret Brennan: Don’t you want to check the Fed?

Vourud: We want an economic system that works for the American people, which includes the Fed. And the president has been very clear that everything that is asking the Fed are lower interest rates, because he believes it is important. When he looks around the world, and has countries that reduce rates, and yet we do not see that in this country, given all the positive economic indicators we are seeing. And then we have poor fiscal management in the Fed regarding this renewal of the building that I am sure you will ask me. Those are the types of things we want to see from Fed. This is not part of an existential problem with respect to the Federal Reserve.

Margaret Brennan: Well, the Fed indicates that they are in a tendency towards a rate cut, although probably not as soon as this week. We mention those renovations at the top of the program, but I do want to ask about the expense, or the lack of it, that the Trump administration is trying to direct. The White House said they will actually release the remaining $ 5 billion in education, funds that had been held from public schools until recently. There were 10 Republican senators very concerned about this, and they came out and said that their statement that money is destined to the radical programs of the left was incorrect. What changed your mind? What made you free this money?

Vourud: Well, we had been going through a programmatic review with these funds. These are programs that, as administration, do not support. We have asked for their elimination in the president’s budget for precisely the reasons of which they flow to left wing organizations often. Fortunately, the president entered the position, put an executive order that said he cannot: these funds cannot go to this type of initiatives. I will only give you an example, the acquisition of the English language flowed to the public education system of the New York school to go to illegal immigration defense organizations. Preschool development subsidies are not really going to preschool. He goes to the curriculum to put CRT in the school system for such small people up to four years.

Margaret Brennan: Well, these senators said they go to adult students who work to obtain employment skills and programs after school.

Vought: And what we–

Margaret Brennan: So you considered it necessary?

Vourud: We believe it is important to get the money at this time, but we have taken a prolonged period of time to ensure that it does not go to the types of things we saw under the Biden administration.

Margaret Brennan: Because, you know, Senator Lindsey Graham told the Washington Post, the administration is considering considering the narca of the Department of Education. This, you know, termination process. Is that the plan? Are you looking to recover education funds in a termination package? And if so, when are you sending that?

Vourud: We can be, we are always looking for potential termination options. This is a set of funds that we wanted to make sure it came out. We did our programmatic review. We wanted to make sure it came out before the school year, even though it is funds for several years. This is not funds that would expire at the end of this year. We are looking to make a termination package. We are always meditating to what extent Congress is willing to participate in that process, and we are seeing many different options in that regard, but we certainly have nothing to announce here today. But we are delighted to have the first termination package in decades, and we have the process in motion again.

Margaret Brennan: So there is no termination package before September?

VOUGHT: Not here to say that. We are looking at all our options, we will see and evaluate where the hill is, what are the particular financing opportunities we have, but nothing we are going to announce today,

Margaret Brennan: because some of the funds that expire in September have also been stopped in the Health Front. Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, another 13 Republicans, came out with a letter that said it has taken to release funds for the National Institute of Health for Cardiovascular Diseases, Cancer. Will those funds be launched?

Vourud: Again, we are going through the same process with the NIH we did with education. I mean–

Margaret Brennan: But there is a time cost here.

Vought: -$ 2 million to inject dogs with cocaine in which the NIH spent money, $ 75,000 for Harvard to study the lizards of the trees with leaf blowers. That is the type of waste we have seen in the NIH. And that is not even reaching the extent to which NIH was armed against the American people in recent years, with respect to the financing gain of the research of functions caused by the pandemic. We have an agency that needs a dramatic review. Fortunately, we have a great new head, but we will have to advance by line to make sure that the NIH is financed correctly.

Margaret Brennan: Are you going to publish cancer financing research? And the financing of cardiovascular disease research?

Vourud: We will continue, we will continue with the same process that we have passed with respect to the Department of Education, that each of these agencies

Margaret Brennan: before September, will that money be launched?

Vought: -And we will launch that financing when we finish with that review.

Margaret Brennan: Because, as you know, there is concern that the money is retaining, hoping not to be spent. I mean, if we look at the White House budget, it requires a 26% cut to HHS, cuts from $ 18 billion to NIH. Is it just a back door shape for those cuts to occur?

Vourud: Well, I do not want to talk to any specific program with respect to what we could do with respect to the termination throughout the end of this fiscal year, but we certainly recognize that we have the capacity and executive tools to finance less than the congress is assigned, and to use the tools that the act of conflict control, a law we are not very well, we are not aware of what we give, to send to the tools towards the fiscal year.

Margaret Brennan: then, only for our viewers, the Embediamment Control Law is the legal mechanism that the president uses to delay or avoid expense funds assigned by Congress. It seems that you want to have a discussion, or the Democrats think you want to have a discussion, about the power of the bag and who possesses it. Do you want that to go to the Supreme Court?

Vourud: Well, look, for 200 years, the presidents have the ability to spend less than the assignments of Congress. No one would dispute, and our founders did not argue that Congress has the ability to establish the appropriation roof. But 200 years of presidents, until the 1970s they had the ability to spend less, if they could find efficiencies, or if they could find waste that an agency was doing.

Margaret Brennan: Does that sound like a yes?-

Vourud:- We lost that ability in the 1970s. The President set out to restore that financing authority for the Presidency, and is vital. If you observe when we began to lose control, it was just at the time of the 1970s.

Margaret Brennan: Well, many senators, Republican senators, are very uncomfortable with the tactics you are using. Senator Murkowski, Senator Collins, that president of the Assignments Committee that is really executing this financing process. And Senator Collins said you are overcoming the limits of what the Executive can do without the consent of the legislative branch. You need to work with it to overcome your budget. And, in fact, it must also be able to get the Democrats on board to reach that threshold of 60 votes to approve any type of government funds to avoid a government closure at the end of September.

Vought: I have a great relationship with Senator Collins. I appreciate the work you do. She is the president of the Assignments Committee, so we will obviously have differences of opinion as to the extent to which these tools must be used. I mean, she had concerns with the termination package. The termination package was a vote that Congress had to make these permanent cuts,

Margaret Brennan:- In a party line vote, she says, you want to do these Naufla. You do it through a regular order, and you can put, you can put the termination in a bill of assignments,

Vought: -But that was in fact, under regular order. That is the challenge, is that the appropriate wants to use all the termination, they want to put them in their invoices and then they want to spend more on other programs. We act, we have a debt of $ 37 billion, Margaret. In fact, we need to reduce the deficit and have a cut dollar, go to $ 1 due to the deficit reduction. That is not what appropriators want, and it is not news that the Trump administration will bring a paradigm shift to this city in terms of the spending business.

Margaret Brennan: I would recognize that you just added to debt and deficit with this …

Vourud: – No, I would not recognize it. We reduced

Margaret Brennan: – The expense and the tax bill that has just passed?

VOUGHT: correct.

Margaret Brennan: where you lifted the debt roof.

Vourud: The debt roof is an extension of the limit in what is needed to pay their previous invoices. In terms of the bill itself, it costs $ 400 billion in deficit reduction, $ 1.5 billion in mandatory savings reforms, the largest we have seen in history.

Margaret Brennan: Well, I want to make sure to get to the rest of this before letting you go here, because we are running out of time. You said, a few weeks ago, that the assignments process must be less bipartisan. You only have 53 Republicans. You need Democrats to go on board, here. To say something like that destined to undermine negotiations? Do you really want a government closure?

Vourud: No, of course not. We want to extend the financing at the end of this fiscal year. We understand, from a mathematical perspective, we will need democrats to do that,

Margaret Brennan: Well, what does less bipartisan mean?

Vought: Well, Margaret, all week, the Democrats were arguing that if you approve the draft termination law, I was undermining the bipartisan assignments process. So, if Brian Schatz and any other appropriator are making that argument for a week,

Margaret Brennan: -The President of the Senate Assignments Committee is who said …

Vought: -You have to be able to respond and say, if you are going to call a termination package that told us during the month of January and February that we should use less expenses, if you are going to say that you are undermining the process of bipartisan allocations, then perhaps we should have a conversation about that. That is all that was destined to transmit.

Margaret Brennan: But, the alternative to this process is another continuous resolution, these support measures. Are you open to that, because that would block the funds of the Biden era? What is your alternative here? If you want a less bipartisan process, how does this solve? Because it seems that you are putting the predicate for a shutdown.

Vourud: We are not placing the predicate for a shutdown. We are putting the predicate of the fact that the only thing that has worked in this city: the bipartisan appropriation process is broken. Leads to Omnibus invoices. We want to avoid an omnibus invoice, and all options are on the table to do so.

Margaret Brennan: Are all options on the table?

Vourud: We need an appropriation process that works. Let’s go through the process. We are going to work with them, and we are going to do everything possible to use that process to have cheaper results for the US taxpayer.

Margaret Brennan: They told me we are out of time. Russell Vought, thanks for your time today.