The Overthinker's Journal

The Senate has confirmed Russell Vought as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. This is a role he previously held under the first Trump administration. But his position isn’t just about budget numbers. It’s about power, ideology, and a radical restructuring of governance.

The newly reaffirmed Director of OMB spent the four years between the Trump administrations creating the “Center for Renewing America.” It states its mission is “to renew a consensus of America as a nation under God with unique interests worthy of defending that flow from its people, institutions, and history, where individuals’ enjoyment of freedom is predicated on just laws and healthy communities.”

How does Vought suggest achieving those goals? Not through leadership, but through fear:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. We want, when they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all the rules against our energy industry, because they have no bandwidth, financially, to do so. We want to put them in trauma.”

He uses the word “bureaucrats” to make us sound frightening, uncaring, and worthy of being fired, and maybe even removing our personhood.

It’s one thing to talk about traumatizing a nameless bureaucrat. It’s another to talk about traumatizing a William or a Betty.

So, when you hear them say “bureaucrat,” remember that is just another word for a career civil servant. A federal employee who isn’t appointed by the President.

It’s scary that this is what the administration’s leaders think about the employees they supervise. But even scarier is the vision they have for America.

Friday, Vought was also named the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protections Bureau. This is an organization set up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Its mission is to implement and enforce federal consumer financial law and ensures that markets for consumer financial products are transparent, fair, and competitive.

What was Vought’s first act as the head of CFPB? Read for yourself: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-acting-cfpb-chief-halts-all-supervision-companies-2025-02-09/

Vought’s orders were to:

• Zero out the bureau’s budget for next quarter
• Stand down all enforcement activity
• Basically pull the plug on the bureau

In case that last point wasn’t obvious enough, they literally put an electrical plug removed from its socket on their web page.

Visiting https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ on Sunday.

For comparison, yesterday the site looked like this:

Visiting the site via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at: https://web.archive.org/web/20250207022814/https://www.consumerfinance.gov/

I had no idea that being treated fairly by banks, lenders and other financial institutions was such a heinous idea.

By halting all supervision of financial companies, Vought has effectively greenlit predatory lending, unchecked banking practices, and financial abuse with no oversight. The very agency meant to protect consumers is now powerless to enforce its rules.

Next, Vought turns his attention to his main job as OMB Director. The Office of Management and Budget sets budgets for every executive branch agency.

Remember from Civics class that the Legislature passes the laws and the Executive enacts the laws? All that enacting is going to be shut down, unless it aligns with the administration’s views.

Take it from Vought’s words. His goal is to traumatize federal employees. His goal is to shut down the financial bandwidth of federal agencies to take action.

Take it from Vought’s actions. The CFPB is just a taste of what is in store for every single agency, office, bureau, and department in the government.

Take it from the Center for Renewing America’s website. It is argued there that congressional appropriations are merely suggestions, not binding laws that dictate agency funding. The organization advocates using impoundment, a practice in which the executive branch refuses to spend funds allocated by Congress.

This practice was heavily restricted after President Nixon’s abuses, but impoundment is now being reconsidered as a tool for executive control. Vought’s interpretation suggests an administration willing to sidestep Congress entirely, governing by withholding funds rather than executing the laws it was elected to enforce.

Take it from Project 2025’s plan. Trump may not have read it, but Vought helped write it. The roadmap asserts that the current federal civil service should be replaced by a new “Policy/Career” schedule of employees, filled by people who show loyalty to the President and his policies. Further, federal agencies that don’t fall in line with the President’s goals should be dismantled or abolished.

The future of federal governance, and its ability to serve the public, depends on engagement, oversight, and accountability. Ignoring this won’t make it go away.