Russ Vought, budget director in the Trump administration, has become a driving force behind House Republicans’ hostage strategy for the debt ceiling, The Washington Post reported last weekend. The vision he’s selling is one where brave conservatives finally manage to decimate the federal government without deep cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. But even a quick glance at his pitch shows that he’s less trailblazer and more Pied Piper, luring the GOP to what will certainly be disaster.
Since leaving the White House, Vought has been busy running a think tank called the Center for Renewing America, which has a staff packed with other former Trump administration B-listers slash far-right luminaries. (Who knew that Kash Patel, Ken Cuccinelli and Jeff Clark were all officemates now?) From that post, Vought’s been shopping around a 10-year budget plan that he claims solves the math problem that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has faced in trying to present a set of demands to Democrats in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
Even a quick glance at his pitch shows that he’s less trailblazer and more Pied Piper, luring the GOP to what will certainly be disaster.
In contrast to demands Republicans have made in similar debt-ceiling standoffs, Vought’s plan leaves Social Security and Medicare untouched, a position that Trump has encouraged and that political attacks have forced McCarthy to embrace. Instead, Vought is suggesting that Republicans go after a target that would be much more politically palatable in his view: “woke and weaponized government.” It’s a patently nonsense phrase that syncs with the GOP’s recent obsessions. Vought’s fingerprints are fittingly all over the origins of the House subcommittee investigating the supposed “weaponization of the federal government.”
A recent Newsweek op-ed from Vought that intended to make the case for his budget plan and that has been praised by the likes of Sen. Mike Lee,…
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