Tag: government spending

“The problem for Trump is that for all of his talk of prioritizing loyalty in his second term, he has staffed his administration with a number of conservative ideologues who could have very different ideas about what the government should be doing — none more influential than his likely soon-to-be budget director, Russ Vought.
Vought is a well-known quantity on Capitol Hill from his time as a staffer there, to say nothing of his work as a Project 2025 author and all-around warrior for small government. Republicans there saw his fingerprints on the spending freeze — or the “Vought memo,” as some are calling it.

“This has Russ’s name written all fucking over it,” said one GOP aide who works in appropriations, adding, ”I see a disparity between what Trump wants to do and what Russ wants to do.”

In other words, the battle between fiscal hawks and populists is set to rage not only on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in the coming months, but inside the White House itself.

“There’s an undercurrent of the old Republican Party at play where they’re like, ‘We’re going to cut benefits’ and all this,” the lawmaker said. “And like the new Republican Party is like, ‘Yeah, we don’t care about that.’””

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/01/trump-unreliable-spending-cuts-column-00201754