Trump's Budget Enforcer: From the 2025 Plan to Government Closure Enforcer

The President had a warning for the opposition party.

In the near future he will determine what "Democrat agencies" he would reduce and whether those reductions would be temporary or permanent.

He said the government shutdown, which began on Tuesday, had given him an "unique chance."

"I have a meeting today with the budget director, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame," he wrote on his Truth Social website on Thursday.

The Project 2025 Connection

Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, may not be a household name.

But Project 2025, a right-wing plan for administration put together primarily by previous administration figures like Vought when the Republicans were out of power, featured prominently during last year's presidential campaign.

The comprehensive policy guide contained proposals for dramatic reductions in the federal bureaucracy, increased executive power, strict border controls, a nationwide abortion ban and other elements of an far-right social program.

It was often highlighted by Democratic presidential nominee the former vice president, as Trump's "dangerous plan" for the coming years if he was to win.

At the time, trying to calm undecided voters, the president attempted to separate himself from the proposal.

"I know nothing about the 2025 plan," Trump wrote in mid-2024. "I don't agree with certain aspects of their proposal and some elements are completely unreasonable and terrible."

A Change in Strategy

Now, however, the president is employing the conservative blueprint as a threat to get Democrats to agree to his spending requirements.

And he is holding up Vought, who authored a chapter on the employment of presidential authority, as a kind of financial grim reaper, ready to take a scythe to government programmes important to Democrats.

To make the point even clearer, on Thursday night the president posted an AI-generated parody music video on Truth Social with the director depicted as the grim reaper, accompanied by changed words of Blue Oyster Cult's classic song.

Political Reactions

In Congress, Republican leaders have repeated the president's description of the director as the White House heavy.

"We don't control what he's going to do," GOP Senate leader John Thune said. "This represents the danger of closing federal operations and handing the keys to Russ Vought."

The Utah senator of Utah told Fox News that the director had been "getting ready for this situation for many years."

That may be a bit of an overstatement, but the director, who gained experience as a congressional staffer for Republican budget hawks and assisted in managing the advocacy division of the conservative think tank, has extensive background examining the complexities of government spending.

The Bean-Counter Behind the President

He spent a year as the assistant head of the White House budget office during Trump's first term, rising to be its head in that year.

In contrast to numerous others who worked for the president during that initial term, Vought had staying power - and was quickly reinstalled as head of the budget office when the president came back this year.

"A lot of those who didn't come back represent an old way of thinking," said Richard Stern, a think tank official who, similar to the director, started his professional life in conservative congressional budget circles.

"The director was innovative in the first term and right on time now."

While the director doesn't tend to avoid divisive comments – he previously stated that he hoped to become "the person who crushes the deep state" – he doesn't particularly appear the role of conservative villain.

Thinning hair and wearing glasses, with a greying beard, Vought's public statements typically have the measured cadence of a numbers expert or academic.

He doesn't possess the narrow-eyed glower and heated language of another advisor, another longtime Trump adviser who oversees White House immigration policy.

Seizing Opportunity in Shutdown

Currently the president has warned to unleash Vought at a moment when, because of the legal limbo caused by the federal closure, their reductions could become more extensive and lasting than those implemented previously.

Former House Speaker the political veteran, a veteran of the major closure battles of the nineties, told the media outlet that the director and his staff have been preparing for precisely this situation while they were in the political wilderness during the previous administration.

"They all knew a federal closure was possible," he said. "I believe they concluded early on that you're only going to get the level of transformation they want if you're determined and very determined and every chance you get, you seize the moment."

The opportunity this shutdown presents for spending reducers like Vought is that, lacking legislative authorization, the government is operating in a legal grey area with reduced spending constraints.

The White House can, theoretically, slash funding and staffing deeper than it could earlier in the year, when expenditures followed standard funding levels.

And while job eliminations would still have to follow a two-month warning, the director could begin the countdown whenever he, and the president, so choose.

Present Measures and Coming Conflicts

The director has declared major infrastructure projects in New York City and Chicago are on hold, citing the need for a review of potentially illegal racial hiring practices - a examination that he said cannot occur during the shutdown.

He's also cancelled almost eight billion dollars in clean energy projects across multiple states, all of which backed the Democratic candidate, the president's rival, in the recent election.

Opposition parties and government employee organizations have promised to fight these cuts in the legal system and stated that Trump is making largely empty threats to try to pressure them into abandoning the fight.

Numerous financial experts have pointed out that the White House reductions have been accompanied by other spending-increasing measures, which could weaken their criticism on Democrats for being the group favoring excessive spending.

"The GOP is raising expenditures in other areas and reducing revenue at the identical period," Brett House, an economics professor at the prestigious institution noted.

"The idea that they're committed to fiscal prudence is not supported by what they're doing."

Electoral Dangers

Certain GOP legislators have voiced worry that the apparent glee with which Trump is touting Vought-ordered cuts could turn public opinion against them if the shutdown stretches on.

GOP officials have cautioned of the serious effects of the shutdown on government services - as part of a strategy to portray Democrats as the ones to blame.

Engaging in this while applauding the methods the government is cutting programs could derail those efforts.

"Russ is less politically in tune than the president," South Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer, a member of the "Doge caucus", told the news website Semafor.

"We, as Republicans have never had so much moral high ground on a spending measure in recent memory… I don't understand why we would squander it, which represents the danger of being aggressive with presidential authority in this moment."

The North Carolina senator, a legislator who has chosen not to run for another term, cautions that government representatives "need to be really careful" in how they announce additional reductions.

The efficiency group-mandated job cuts and programme cuts were mostly disliked, according to public-opinion surveys, causing a drag on the leader's popularity.

A reprise of that could be perilous.

According to Stern, though, the administration, and Vought, may consider the future advantages as well worth the short-term challenges.

"For the director, for me, for anyone working on fiscal matters, this country is going bankrupt,"