Sean Davis
Appearances
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
that's stuff that OMB kind of directs and controls. And, you know, given his experience, his background, he previously had this job in the first Trump administration. I don't think there's a better person on earth than Russ Vogt to do it. I've known him for, gosh, 20 or 25 years.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
And I think one reason Democrats hate him so much is they know he's smarter than they are, and they know that the guy is just – He's so moral. He's so ethical. There's nothing they can do to make him look bad or make him look dishonest because he's just a good, forthright, moral dude.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
And it drives them nuts that they can't run the ops and smears against him that they try to run against everyone else.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
I think basically every fight is more potent when you have your permanent cabinet people in there. You're just able to do more things with a full Senate confirmed director than you can do with an acting director, as good as that person might be.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
And it's actually why it's so important to get Russ in there is that Trump needs to have someone who he's picked, who he knows, who he's worked with and who he knows he can trust. to do all this. And when it comes to controlling spending, you know, there's going to be fights between OMB and Congress, like knock down, drag out fights about constitutional prerogatives.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
Because over the years, you know, Congress has given up tons and tons and tons and tons of power to OMB because they don't actually want to be held accountable for the spending. They want to be able to do their press release and do the ribbon cutting and then be able to blame the administration for this or that getting spent.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
And and what's happened is because of decades, if not longer of them just handing over their power, OMB has a whole lot of power right now, not just to to audit spending, but to direct and even impound it, which is really important.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
Yeah, so it was the Impoundment Control Act. I don't remember the exact year that it was passed. I'm going to say it was probably the mid-70s. I have 1974 in my head for whatever reason. And what it did was it constrained the ability of the executive to stop the flow of funding, notwithstanding congressional appropriation. And for...
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
probably 200 years, 150 to 200 years, it was just accepted that when Congress appropriated money, that was meant to be a ceiling. It was not meant to be a floor. That if Congress says, I want you to spend up to a billion dollars on this thing, that was giving the administration the flexibility to spend that amount.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
that it was not really until this Impoundment Control Act was enacted that people decided that appropriations were actually statutory floors, that the executive had no choice, no flexibility to execute on these for anything less than whatever the bare minimum was that was appropriated. And it's actually a big constitutional fight.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
You're going to have people who believe more in executive authority saying, Hey, the president had this power for 200 years, and it wasn't until this unconstitutional law was passed in the wake of Watergate that they decided suddenly the executive couldn't do that anymore.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
And I think impoundment is really going to become the big battle over the next four years in the Trump administration because we have a debt that's almost $40 trillion. We're almost hitting the debt limit. Congress has shown no interest in anything even remotely resembling impoundment. spending restraint.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
And so I think this impoundment stuff is going to end up being the big constitutional fight, at least on the spending front, that we're going to see for the next couple of years.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
No, it's not working for them at all. And I was actually laughing last night. I was following Adam Schiff, which can be hazardous for your health. So I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. But I was following him on X and he was talking about what he was doing yesterday is we're doing the filibuster and we're going to block this. And it was funny to me because they're not filibustering.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
cloture, which is when debate ends on on Russ votes nomination, was invoked earlier this week by a six vote margin. And what happens in in the Senate with that procedure is once you invoke cloture, there's 30 hours of what's called post cloture debate that allows people to have their final say before you get to a vote on final confirmation or passage. that's all locked in.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
I mean, the schedule is locked. Russ is getting a vote tonight at, I think, 7 p.m. Eastern. There's not a single thing any Democrat or any senator can do about it. And so I found it really funny to see this kind of impotent chest-thumping from Schiff and Democrats and Rachel Maddow. They know they have no power to stop anything because the 2024 election was a disaster for them.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
And so now they're just trying to save face and try to prove to their dwindling numbers of voters that they're still in the fight and they still matter. And the truth of the matter is they don't.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
Well, yeah, we run The Federalist, thefederalist.com. I think we're the most honest, hardworking, most courageous journalists out there doing all the stories that the media, it was trying to get the government to censor us to hide. So check us out. I'm on X at SeanMDAV and follow us at thefederalist.com.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
Thank you, sir.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
Yeah, OMB is huge. It generally kind of gets thrown on the back burner among political types because anytime you have like math and numbers being thrown around, the journos can't handle it anymore. So they go back and they try to find a horse race story or something dumb to cover. But OMB is the central hub for basically all spending activities within the federal government.
The Charlie Kirk Show
President Trump, The Promise-Keeper ft. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
It's what puts together the federal budget every year. It manages whether a whole host of disbursements can be allowed or not. It coordinates with all the various federal agencies. And when you're looking at, for example, discretionary spending, which is the spending that gets appropriated every year by Congress, it's not Social Security or Medicare.