The White House memo announcing a federal spending freeze, rescinded Wednesday afternoon amid chaos and backlash, was the brainchild of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s pick to direct the Office of Management and Budget. Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, explained on CNN that Vought felt that the freeze was needed. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at her first briefing that Vought asked her to convey that “the line to his office is open” if agency heads “feel that programs are necessary.”

Both comments were striking because Vought hasn’t yet been confirmed for the OMB job. The Senate Budget Committee is set to convene Thursday to consider his nomination. Unless he’s rejected, this week’s muddle will become merely the opening salvo in a broader push to expand executive authority at the expense of the legislative branch — and the rule of law. “We are living in a post-Constitutional time,” Vought wrote in 2022.

Presidents deserve significant deference in staffing their administrations. But Vought is not acceptable, given his combative disdain for Congress’s constitutional power of the purse and his refusal to abide by a vital reform enacted after Watergate to check the president’s authority.

Vought wants more than to temporarily pause some government spending. He aims to invoke a power known as impoundment that would allow the president to refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated. This could enable a president to zero out entire funding categories. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 was meant to prevent presidents from abusing the appropriations process after President Richard M. Nixon refused to spend billions of dollars on programs he opposed.

Based on a radical interpretation of Article II, Vought claims that the 1974 law is unconstitutional, and he hopes the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will strike it down. Impoundment might wind up as the first big case from Trump’s second term that reaches the court. A 1988 opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that “arguments in favor of an inherent impoundment power, carried to their logical conclusion, would render congressional directions to spend merely advisory.”

Vought’s track record as head of the OMB during Trump’s first term demonstrates he cannot be trusted. In early 2020, the budget office diverted billions of dollars from the Pentagon’s military construction budget toward building a border wall — even though Congress had deliberately refused to appropriate the funds. Vought’s office also held up approved military aid to Ukraine while Trump sought to coerce Ukrainian leaders into opening an investigation into Joe Biden. Vought then defied a congressional subpoena, and he was cited by name in one of the articles of impeachment against Trump that passed the House. The Government Accountability Office concluded that Vought’s office broke the law, though he denied it.

During his first tour as budget chief, Vought also advocated cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and other programs on which low-income families depend. He sought huge cuts to education, the Interior Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. At his confirmation hearing on Jan. 15, Vought repeatedly declined to commit to distributing congressionally approved funds if he got the job back. He also wouldn’t answer when pressed specifically on whether he would distribute $3.8 billion in remaining aid for Ukraine.

Vought was an architect of Project 2025 and wrote the chapter on how to better wield executive power. He describes himself as a Christian nationalist and has advocated outlawing the drugs used in medical abortions. He has referred to Jan. 6 rioters as “political prisoners” and has maintained, as recently as last week, that the 2020 election was “rigged.”

Another reason to oppose is his fixation on purging the federal workforce: During Trump’s first term, Vought was the mastermind behind Schedule F, which aimed to reclassify workers to make them easier to fire. Biden unraveled it, but Trump is reviving it. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a 2023 speech. “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 to put them in trauma.”

Running the OMB is one of the most powerful jobs in government. Four years ago, Biden’s highly qualified first pick, Neera Tanden, was compelled to withdraw because of some mean tweets she’d once posted about senators whose votes she needed. In comparison, Vought’s record and paper trail are bursting with red flags. Laws passed by Congress aren’t suggestions. Senators who back Vought are choosing to undermine their own institution and give away their power of the purse.