Project 2025: OMB, Apportionment, and Impoundment
The President is already defying appropriations bills, and Congress is voting to give him more money.
It’s well past time to return to a very important Project 2025 topic: how Russ Vought and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) direct money to executive agencies based on the annual budget that is passed by Congress and signed by the President.
Several weeks ago, I wrote a post outlining the very rapid actions taken by the Trump administration to remake the Executive Office, which includes OMB:
All of that happened before Vought was even confirmed as OMB Director!
Russ Vought is one of the more infamous architects of Project 2025. He authored the chapter on the “Executive Office of the President of the United States.” He was OMB Director from 2019 until the end of the first Trump administration.
Since Vought has once again become Director of OMB, he’s taken more actions to further the Project 2025 agenda. A major technical move that has somewhat slipped under the radar was the official notice that “Program Associate Directors” instead of “Deputy Associate Directors” will be responsible for apportioning the funds assigned in the annual budget. This is recommended by Project 2025.
Apportionment is the process by which OMB distributes funds that have been appropriated by law to government departments and agencies. Appropriation is the process by which Congress allocates funding from the U.S. Treasury to agencies or functions. The Appropriations Committees in the House and Senate are responsible for putting together 12 appropriations bills each year (often combined into one or a few consolidated bills) that are presented to Congress, voted on, and if passed, sent to the President for signature. Thus, the appropriations bills are the laws that set the federal budget for that year.
OMB officials are in charge of and oversee apportioning the appropriated funds to ensure that agencies don’t overspend (or promise to overspend, via a contract) what was appropriated.
So what’s the big deal about having “Program” instead of “Deputy” Associate Directors of OMB in charge of apportionment?
Deputy Associate Directors, or “DADs,” are positions designated for career employees—government employees that go through competitive recruitment. These are nonpolitical employees who often have had long careers in government that extend across administrations. The Program Associate Directors (PADs), in contrast, are noncareer appointments. They can be selected by the Director of OMB and are thus inherently politicized positions (even if they are still subject to the Hatch Act).
Under the first Trump administration, apportionment authority was assigned to PADs. The Biden administration gave apportionment authority to the DADs. Now, Vought has published notice that the apportionment authority will once again be returned to PADs.
Again, why does this matter? Well, because apportionment isn’t supposed to be political. (Russ Vought and Donald Trump would disagree with that statement; more on that below.) The funds have already been appropriated by Congress and the Executive Branch has signed the appropriations bill. There are no more political decisions to be made about whether or not an agency should get that amount of money.
By appointing his own apportionment authority officials, Vought has the power to choose people who will apportion as he or the Trump administration sees fit—not necessarily what is in the appropriations bills. It would be easier to convince someone holding a noncareer position to withhold funds from an agency that the administration doesn’t like than to convince a career employee who was hired without regard to their political convictions. According to current law, withholding funds is only rarely allowed, but that is a law that Vought is eager to test.
Impoundment is when the President decides to withhold funds from agencies that have been appropriated in the annual appropriations bills. There are reasons why the President might want to do this: the agency is spending money improperly, or maybe a program doesn’t need funding anymore due to some external event. In general, though, the President must distribute funding according to the law, which in this case means the appropriations bills.
The law that governs when and how the President can withhold funds is the Impoundment Control Act (Public Law 93-344 and 2 USC Ch. 17B.) The ICA sets strict limits on how long funds can be withheld without Congressional approval, with the goal of preventing the President from withholding funds for purely political reasons, such as if a President doesn’t like a particular program. This ensures that Congress maintains “the power of the purse.” The President can only hold the funding for 45 days after sending a request to Congress to rescind the funding.
Notably, impounding funds was the cause of Trump’s first impeachment—he withheld funding for Ukraine to assist them with the War in Donbas against Russia. OMB employees resigned over concerns about the ICA. A Deputy Associate Director (DAD) at OMB, Mark Sandy, testified to the House in the impeachment inquiry after political appointees at OMB refused. The ICA came up frequently in his testimony.
So, you can see why Trump would have “a thing” against nonpolitical, career officials at OMB, especially if he’d like to take more control over how government agencies are funded. To that end, Russ Vought is the perfect OMB Director for Trump.
Russ Vought does not believe that the limits the ICA places on impoundment are constitutional. In his Senate confirmation hearing, Senator Blumenthal (D-CT) asked Vought directly if he thinks the ICA is constitutional:
BLUMENTHAL: Do you believe the Impoundment Control Act is constitutional?
VOUGHT: No, I don't believe it's constitutional, the President ran on that view, that's his view and I agree with that.
Vought is following through with his beliefs. Funds are being withheld. That is simply evident with the freeze on federal funding and the closure or effective closure of whole agencies, like USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Notably, Project 2025 says nothing about impoundment.
What about the next round of funding?
The current appropriations expire this Friday. Thus, if no new appropriations bills are passed, the government will shut down.
Just today, the House passed a consolidated appropriations bill that they tout as a “clean” continuing resolution. A continuing resolution, or “CR,” is when Congress can’t decide on new appropriations, so they just use the last appropriations bills that were signed into law. But this CR does differ from the last set of appropriations bills; it cuts funding for several programs while adding more defense funding. For instance, it cuts $1B from the D.C. local budget. The House bill would also strip Congress of its own ability to call for a vote on Trump’s declared national emergency that he is using to justify his on-again, off-again tariffs.
Now, the spending bill moves to the Senate, who must pass it by the end of this Friday to avoid a government shutdown. Unless the Senate Republicans decide to jettison the filibuster, which they can do with a weird maneuver and a simple majority, some Senate Democrats will need to vote for the bill (or, more accurately, to vote for cloture) in order for it to pass. Because Trump and Vought do not believe that appropriations bills need to be abided, giving more money to the Executive Branch can almost be considered a blank check. At the very least, Trump and Vought have shown that there is no guarantee that they will fund programs or even whole agencies created by law and funded by law.
All senators now need to make a choice between funding the government—taking a chance that it will be funded according to law—or shutting it down and preserving their own power as a separate branch of the U.S. government.