← Videos · Gov Efficiency & Workforce

Vought Testifies at His Senate Homeland Security Confirmation Hearing for OMB Director, Jan. 15, 2025

January 15, 2025 · PBS NewsHour · 1:59:41

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Russell Vought testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on January 15, 2025, at his confirmation hearing for Director of the Office of Management and Budget, in PBS NewsHour’s full recording of the hearing. In his opening statement, Vought — the son, as he put it, of an electrician and a schoolteacher who balanced their budget — said nearly 80% of Americans did not feel confident their children would lead better lives, and pledged ‘a federal government that works for all Americans, not the interest of bureaucrats and an entrenched establishment.’

Vought described OMB’s mission as going beyond the president’s budget to the management of the federal government, regulatory reform and interagency coordination. Committee Democrats pressed him on his authorship role in Project 2025 and on past statements about federal workers and shuttering departments — questions PBS’s own segment coverage of the hearing highlighted — while Republicans on the committee, whose chairman opened by noting that federal interest costs now exceed the defense budget, backed his fiscal brief.

Why it matters

This is the founding hearing of Vought’s second tenure at OMB: the taxpayer-first framing, the management-and-regulation remit beyond budgeting, and the contested Project 2025 record — the three threads every later Vought fight over spending, workforce and executive power runs through.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Vought’s January 15, 2025 confirmation-hearing commitments — a government that works for taxpayers over bureaucrats, with OMB run as a management office, as he stated them — flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated. Vought was confirmed 53–47 on February 6, 2025 (see the chronicle).

Sources: PBS NewsHour, ‘WATCH LIVE: Russell Vought testifies at Senate confirmation hearing for OMB director,’ January 15, 2025 (video LAcwctNMAQ0); transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, never republished verbatim). Alternate carries of the same hearing recorded in the index: The Hill (EkRx45N03xA) and PBS NewsHour’s opening-statement segment (LecBYMiSuOA).