Legislative Letters

LCV Urges Senators to Oppose Project 2025 Author Russell Vought’s Nomination to serve as OMB Director

Jan 29, 2025

Ahead of the Senate floor vote on the confirmation of Russell Vought to serve as OMB Director for the Trump administration, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) sent the following letter to members of the Senate.

***

January 29, 2025

U.S. Senate

Washington, DC 20510

Re: Oppose Russell Vought’s Nomination to serve as OMB Director

Dear Senator:

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) believes that everyone has a right to clean air, clean water, public lands, and a safe climate protected by a just and equitable democracy. Each year, LCV publishes the National Environmental Scorecard, which details the voting records of members of Congress on environmental legislation. The Scorecard is distributed to LCV members, concerned voters nationwide, and the media.

We urge you to oppose the nomination of Russell Vought to be the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Russell Vought is the principal architect of the Project 2025 agenda to gut government programs that protect our environment and lower costs for working families in order to enrich their billionaire donors. He has a history of disregarding the law and Constitution and is a self-described Christian nationalist who seeks to do lasting damage to the government’s ability to help our communities, and must not be confirmed.

As OMB Deputy Director, and then acting Director, during the previous Trump administration, Vought oversaw budgets that proposed extreme anti-environmental spending cuts, including cuts to EPA’s budget as steep as 31%, down to levels not seen in decades. More recently, his Center for Renewing America proposed eliminating the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the EPA environmental justice fund, and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). In a 2023 speech, he said “We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.” The cuts he has repeatedly proposed threaten the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the cost savings of cleaner technologies. This extreme agenda would harm our communities and Vought would be dangerous at the helm of OMB.

Further, Russell Vought seeks to weaponize the executive branch, politicize federal programs and aid, and hollow out the ability of government to help our communities. He is well known for his contempt for civil servants, reflected in his now infamous quote about wanting to put them “in trauma.” Mr. Vought has already revived his illegal effort at the end of President Trump’s last term to strip civil service protections from tens of thousands of federal workers, known as “Schedule F” or “Schedule Career/Policy,” with the goal of replacing career professionals with political loyalists who can steamroll objective concerns, such as science supporting the harmful public health impact of certain pollutants. Furthermore, he believes the Impoundment Control Act to be unconstitutional despite numerous court decisions to the contrary, and in his confirmation hearings he refused to commit to following the law even if he disagrees with it – something that should be disqualifying for any nominee. Just this week, OMB moved to unilaterally cut funding for all federal programs, grants, and aid programs, including disaster unemployment assistance, clean air monitoring, safe drinking water, low income home energy assistance, and so much more, creating chaos and harming people in every state. All of these extreme plans are laid out in Project 2025, which he helped lead, and despite President-elect Trump’s supposed disavowal, are now being put in motion by his administration and outside advisors.

For all these reasons, LCV urges you to oppose the nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of OMB. LCV will strongly consider including this vote in our 2025 National Environmental Scorecard. If you would like more information, please reach out to a member of our government relations team.

Sincerely,

Gene Karpinski

President