Maine’s U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King were divided Thursday in their confirmation votes for President Trump’s new budget director.
Russell Vought held the same position in the Office of Management and Budget during the first Trump administration. More recently, however, he has drawn attention as a key architect of Project 2025, the conservative plan to dramatically overhaul the federal government.
Collins, a Republican, voted with the rest of her caucus to approve Vought late Thursday after Democrats pulled an all-nighter giving speeches criticizing the nominee, Trump and his advisor, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Collins said Vought was well-qualified for the job, having previously served as both director and deputy director at OMB.
“When I am evaluating cabinet nominees, I base my support on whether the person is qualified for the job, not on whether I agree with all of their positions,” Collins said in a statement. “I have applied that standard to nominations from both Republican and Democratic Presidents and I believe that Presidents are entitled to broad discretion when selecting cabinet secretaries.”
But King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, called Vought “the last person who should be put in the job at the heart of the operation of our government.” And he described Project 2025 as a quote “blueprint for the shredding of the constitution and the transition of our country to authoritarian rule.”
“Now, the nominee before us today is one of the ring leaders of this assault, one of the ring leaders of the assault on our Constitution,” King said in a floor speech. “He believes in a presidency of virtually unlimited powers. He’s written extensively about this. And explicitly rejects, for example, the exclusive power of Congress to authorize and appropriate funds for the operation of the government.”
Vought’s position on federal spending also puts him at odds with Collins, who leads one of the two congressional committees that decides how to divvy up the federal budget. Vought has suggested that he and Trump support challenging a 1974 law that severely limits a president’s ability to withhold or cancel funding appropriated by Congress.
Collins said this week that she hopes the courts will side with Congress when the issue of Trump’s attempts to control spending is inevitably litigated.
The Senate is expected to vote on additional Cabinet nominees next week, potentially including Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary. King and Collins were also on opposite sides of the Senate Intelligence Committee vote on Gabbard, which Collins supporting the nominee and King opposed. Collins has yet to declare her intention on Kennedy.
Collins has only voted against one nominee — Pete Hegseth for defense secretary — out of the 13 that have been confirmed by the Senate to date. Hegseth is the only nominee so far to encounter any Republican opposition on the Senate floor, according to vote tracking by The New York Times.
King has voted against five of the 13 Cabinet members confirmed so far: Vought, Hegseth, Pam Bondi as attorney general, Eric Turner as secretary of housing and urban development, and Lee Zeldin as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
