{"id":16351,"date":"2025-02-06T13:32:44","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T13:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16351"},"modified":"2025-02-06T13:32:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T13:32:52","slug":"the-gops-unreliable-cutter-in-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16351","title":{"rendered":"The GOP\u2019s Unreliable Cutter-in-Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“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 \u2014 none more influential than his likely soon-to-be budget director<\/a>, Russ Vought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a> and all-around warrior for small government. Republicans there saw his fingerprints on the spending freeze \u2014 or the \u201cVought memo,\u201d as some are calling it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis has Russ\u2019s name written all fucking over it,\u201d said one GOP aide who works in appropriations, adding, \u201dI see a disparity between what Trump wants to do and what Russ wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an undercurrent of the old Republican Party at play where they\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019re going to cut benefits\u2019 and all this,\u201d the lawmaker said. \u201cAnd like the new Republican Party is like, \u2018Yeah, we don\u2019t care about that.\u2019\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2025\/02\/01\/trump-unreliable-spending-cuts-column-00201754<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“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 \u2014 none more influential than his likely soon-to-be budget director, Russ Vought.
\nVought 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 \u2014 or the \u201cVought memo,\u201d as some are calling it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has Russ\u2019s name written all fucking over it,\u201d said one GOP aide who works in appropriations, adding, \u201dI see a disparity between what Trump wants to do and what Russ wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an undercurrent of the old Republican Party at play where they\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019re going to cut benefits\u2019 and all this,\u201d the lawmaker said. \u201cAnd like the new Republican Party is like, \u2018Yeah, we don\u2019t care about that.\u2019\u201d”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2025\/02\/01\/trump-unreliable-spending-cuts-column-00201754<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[7,278,221,129,1193,130,506,279,170],"class_list":["post-16351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-debt","tag-deficit","tag-donald-trump","tag-gop","tag-government-spending","tag-republican","tag-republicans","tag-spending","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16353,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16351\/revisions\/16353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}