{"id":7211,"date":"2025-03-12T20:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T20:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-gop-advances-trumps-latest-budget-pick-as-dems-deem-him-a-vought-acolyte\/"},"modified":"2025-03-12T20:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T20:22:12","slug":"senate-gop-advances-trumps-latest-budget-pick-as-dems-deem-him-a-vought-acolyte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-gop-advances-trumps-latest-budget-pick-as-dems-deem-him-a-vought-acolyte\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate GOP advances Trump\u2019s latest budget pick as Dems deem him a Vought \u2018acolyte\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President Donald Trump\u2019s pick for the No. 2 post at the White House budget office \u2014 a position key to orchestrating Trump\u2019s orders to freeze funding \u2014 has cleared a critical committee vote, sending the nomination to the Senate floor.<\/p>\n

In a 11-10 vote, the Senate Budget Committee backed Dan Bishop\u2019s nomination to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. The Senate is expected to vote to confirm Bishop in the next few weeks, officially seating him as right-hand man to OMB Director Russ Vought.<\/p>\n

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley<\/a>, the committee\u2019s top Democrat, said before the Wednesday committee vote that Democratic senators are \u201ctroubled\u201d by Bishop\u2019s support for Trump\u2019s orders to freeze funding Congress previously passed into law. Merkley also questioned Bishop’s promise to follow the direction of Vought, who led OMB in withholding aid to Ukraine and other efforts during Trump\u2019s first presidency.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I did witness through his testimony is that he\u2019s an acolyte of Vought, and Vought is a determined Trumpian minion who will follow Trump’s direction to break the law and the Constitution,\u201d Merkley said.<\/p>\n

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee already endorsed Bishop, who was a House lawmaker until this year and has been serving as a senior adviser to the White House budget office during the confirmation process.<\/p>\n

Throughout his Senate vetting, Bishop repeatedly told lawmakers that it wouldn\u2019t be his job at OMB to judge whether Trump\u2019s orders are lawful under the decades-old impoundment law \u2014 which allows presidents to withhold money Congress has appropriated \u2014 despite his credentials as a lawyer who ran for attorney general of North Carolina last year. He did tell senators last week that there is \u201ca compelling argument that there is power in the executive in the nature of impoundment,\u201d as lawsuits seeking to block Trump\u2019s funding freezes are being argued in courtrooms throughout the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cExactly what its contours are, I don’t know,\u201d Bishop told the Budget Committee in his confirmation hearing before the panel this month. \u201cBut I support the president’s plan to use impoundment to get federal government spending in line.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s pick for the No. 2 post at the White House budget office \u2014 a position key to orchestrating Trump\u2019s orders to freeze funding \u2014 has cleared a critical committee vote, sending the nomination to the Senate floor. In a 11-10 vote, the Senate Budget Committee backed Dan Bishop\u2019s nomination to serve as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}