Trump’s bureaucracy-cutting chief far from done

It has been four months since Elon Musk, President Trump's bureaucratic demolition man, abandoned Washington in a flurry of recriminations and chaos.

- By DoyLE McManus

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI AFP/Getty Images

HOUSE Speaker Mike Johnson, left, and other Republicans have not objected.

But the Trump administration’s crusade to dismantle much of the federal government never ended. It’s merely under new management: the less colorful but more methodical Russell Vought, director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.

Vought has become the backroom architect of Trump’s aggressive strategy —slashing the federal workforce, freezing billions in congressionally approved spending in actions his critics often call illegal.

Now Vought has proposed using the current government shutdown as an opportunity to fire thousands of bureaucrats permanently instead of merely furloughing them temporarily. If any do return to work, he has suggested that the government need not give them back pay — contrary to a law Trump signed in 2019.

Those threats may prove merely to be pressure tactics as Trump tries to persuade Democrats to accept spending cuts on Medicaid, Obamacare and other programs.

But the shutdown battle is the current phase of a much larger one. Vought’s long-term goals, he says, are to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and “deconstruct the administrative state.”

He's still only partway done.

“Td estimate that Vought has implemented maybe 10% or 15% of his program,” said Donald F. Kettl, former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland. “There may be as much as 90% to go. If this were a baseball game, we'd beinthe top ofthe second inning.”

Along the way, Vought (pronounced “vote”) has chipped relentlessly at Congress’ ability to control the use of federal funds, massively expanding the power ofthe president.

“He has waged the most serious attack on separation of powers in American history,” said Elaine Kamarck, an expert on federal management at the Brookings Institution.