U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota) speaks to the Brandon Valley Area Chamber of Commerce on Nov. 26, 2024, in Brandon. (Makenzie Huber | South Dakota Searchlight)

BRANDON — Incoming U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) signaled Tuesday he’s willing to push back against potential attempts by President-elect Donald Trump to expand presidential power over federal spending.

“Every president is going to come in and try to do as much as they can by executive action as possible,” Thune said. “Congress, in some cases, is going to be the entity that sometimes will have to put the brakes on.”

Thune spoke Tuesday to the Brandon Valley Area Chamber of Commerce and also took questions from reporters. He said Republicans in Congress will work with Trump to achieve shared policy goals.

“The things we want to achieve at present are by and large the same,” Thune said. “How we get there is another matter, and we’ll have to work through that.”

Trump’s pick for his budget director, Russ Vought, served in the same role during the first Trump administration. Vought has since outlined an aggressive vision for presidential power in Project 2025, a 922-page document from the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation.

“The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government.” Vought wrote. “Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.”

Trump has meanwhile tried to assert greater control over the Cabinet selection process, calling for the Senate to recess the chamber early next year so he can appoint whoever he wants without having to go through the confirmation process.

Thune said Tuesday he plans to immediately begin committee hearings on Cabinet nominees when Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025.

That’ll give the Senate a head start vetting Trump’s nominees before his inauguration on Jan. 20. After Trump is sworn in, Thune expects some nominations to quickly hit the floor of the Senate.

“The committees can’t report them out until the president is officially sworn in and they’re officially nominated,” Thune told the audience Tuesday in Brandon. “But they could do hearings.”

Thune told South Dakota reporters after the event that even though some questions have been raised about nominees, they “deserve a fair process” where senators question them on their background, qualifications and whether they “ought to be in these really important positions.”

Thune said he has not taken recess appointments off the table if Democrats try to obstruct or delay the confirmation of nominees when they reach the Senate floor, “particularly if they’re well regarded and they have bipartisan support.”

Top priorities for Republican senators heading into the new session of Congress, Thune said, include extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and securing the nation’s southern border.

Thune said he plans to begin drafting a budget reconciliation resolution to push an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, key provisions of which expire at the end of 2025. The reconciliation process allows tax and spending bills to pass the Senate with 51 votes, instead of the 60 needed for most Senate legislation. Republicans will control 53 seats in the new Senate and will also control the House.

Failing to extend the tax cuts would lead to a $4 trillion tax increase, Thune said.

States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau contributed to this report.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and X.

Donald Trump, at the time president of the United States, listens to then-Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russ Vought deliver remarks prior to Trump signing executive orders on Oct. 9, 2019, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

WASHINGTON — Incoming White House budget director Russ Vought has spent much of his career learning the detailed, often convoluted mechanisms that make up the Office of Management and Budget.

The agency, little known outside Washington, D.C., is relatively small compared to the rest of the federal government, but it acts like a nucleus for the executive branch and holds significant power.

OMB is responsible for releasing the president’s budget request every year, but also manages much of the executive branch by overseeing departments’ performance, reviewing the vast majority of federal regulations and coordinating how the various agencies communicate with Congress. 

Vought was deputy director, acting director and then director at OMB during Trump’s first term.

Before that Vought worked as vice president of Heritage Action for America, policy director for the U.S. House Republican Conference, executive director of the Republican Study Committee and a legislative assistant for former Texas Republican Sen. Phil Gramm. He has an undergraduate degree from Wheaton College and a law degree from George Washington University Law School.

Following Trump’s first term in office, Vought founded the right-leaning Center for Renewing America. The group’s mission is “to renew a consensus of America as a nation under God with unique interests worthy of defending that flow from its people, institutions, and history, where individuals’ enjoyment of freedom is predicated on just laws and healthy communities.”

Cutting government spending

Vought outlined his agenda for the next four years in Project 2025, a 922-page document from the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation that led to speculation during the presidential campaign about what Trump would seek to do without Congress, including in areas that constitutionally fall within the legislative branch, like government spending.

The Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, repeatedly tried to tie Project 2025 to Trump and his campaign, and they sought to distance themselves from its proposals. But Trump has since nominated some of its authors or contributors to run federal departments and agencies.

Vought, in a 26-page chapter on the executive office of the president, wrote the OMB director “must ensure the appointment of a General Counsel who is respected yet creative and fearless in his or her ability to challenge legal precedents that serve to protect the status quo.”

Trump, Vought and many others are bullish about cutting government spending, but will likely run into legal challenges if they try to spend more or considerably less than lawmakers approve in the dozen annual government funding bills. 

Budget request

One of Vought’s most visible responsibilities will be releasing the president’s annual budget request, a sweeping document that lays out the commander-in-chief’s proposal for the federal government’s tax and spending policy.

The president’s budget, however, is just a request since Congress has the constitutional authority to establish tax and spending policy.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill write the dozen annual government funding bills that account for about one-third of annual federal spending. The rest of the federal government’s spending comes from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are classified as mandatory programs and mostly run on autopilot unless Congress approves changes and the president signs off on a new law.

That separation of powers led to frustration during Trump’s first term in office and will likely do so again, since he spoke during the 2024 campaign about using “impoundment” to prevent the federal government from spending money Congress has approved.

Trump withheld security assistance funding from Ukraine during his first term in office, leading to one of his two impeachments and a ruling from the Government Accountability Office —a nonpartisan government watchdog — that he had violated the law.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” GAO wrote. “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”

Trump spoke on the campaign trail about using “impoundment” to drastically cut government spending, but that would likely lead to lawsuits and a Supreme Court ruling. 

Vought’s think tank, Center for Renewing America, published analysis of presidents using impoundment throughout the country’s history, with the authors concluding the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional.

‘Every possible tool’

Vought sought to defend the president’s budget request in his chapter in Project 2025, writing that though “some mistakenly regard it as a mere paper-pushing exercise, the President’s budget is in fact a powerful mechanism for setting and enforcing public policy at federal agencies.”

He signaled the second Trump administration would be more nuanced in its interpretation of presidential authority.

“The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government.” Vought wrote. “Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.”

Vought also wrote about the management aspect of OMB’s portfolio, pressing for political appointees to have more authority and influence than career staff.

“It is vital that the Director and his political staff, not the careerists, drive these offices in pursuit of the President’s actual priorities and not let them set their own agenda based on the wishes of the sprawling ‘good government’ management community in and outside of government,” Vought wrote. “Many Directors do not properly prioritize the management portfolio, leaving it to the Deputy for Management, but such neglect creates purposeless bureaucracy that impedes a President’s agenda—an ‘M Train to Nowhere.’”