| A middle-of-the-night Senate vote to claw back $9 billion in already approved spending Thursday puts Congress on track to use the old-school budget maneuver known as “rescissions” for the first time in decades. The win for President Donald Trump was achieved with Republican votes only – and that’s a good thing, according to White House Budget Director Russ Vought. A “more partisan” appropriations process can deliver better results, he told reporters.  Vought talks to reporters outside the White House on Thursday. Photographer: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA That may sound like heresy in Washington, but Vought argues that no one ever went into the voting booth with budget compromise as their top issue. More partisanship, he said, is the only way to break the cycle of omnibus bills, continuing resolutions and last-minute shutdown threats. To do that, Vought said the president needs a stronger hand. One tool is something Vought calls a “pocket rescission,” which he said would allow Trump to cancel certain funds simply by proposing to cut them and then waiting out the clock at the end of the fiscal year. Trump has also vowed to challenge the bedrock law of modern budgeting — the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 — by arguing that he doesn’t have to spend money just because Congress tells him to. Congress holds the power of the purse, but that power “is a ceiling, it is not a floor,” Vought said. “It is not the notion that you have to spend every last dollar.” A Senate standoff over Vought’s plans raises the risk of a government shutdown as soon as Oct. 1 when current funding runs out. Vought, a key architect of the Project 2025 manifesto to restore presidential powers lost in post-Watergate reforms, wouldn’t identify targets for a future rescission bill. But he said the White House was conducting “programmatic reviews” of Department of Education funding — often a precursor for holding back spending. His hardball approach is already drawing pushback — and not just from Democrats. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of two Republicans to vote against the rescission package, said she took Vought’s comments as a personal challenge to strike bipartisan deals. But Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said Vought’s strategy will make it harder to get Democratic votes. If the president can cancel funding at will, he said, budget agreements “aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.” | 
