White House budget director Russ Vought spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday morning. With a chyron reading “Meet the man behind President Trump’s scorched-earth agenda,” Bash asked: “Explain why the administration wants to cut so much from cancer research?” After that, she asked about cutting funding to develop an AIDS vaccine. “As it pertains to the NIH, we actually want it to go to cancer research,” Russ Vought said. “We want it to go to the research that people think they have been funding through their tax dollars. We don’t want it to go to what we saw in the pandemic, when they were giving money to the EcoHealth Alliance, and we don’t want it to go to waste, fraud, and abuse.”

DANA BASH, CNN: I do want to start with what you submitted late Friday night. It’s some of the administration’s spending proposals for the coming fiscal year. It would cut nondefense spending by more than 22 percent, slash anti-poverty programs, education grants, food and rental assistance, even billions in funding for cancer research. Let’s just start with that last one. Explain why the administration wants to cut so much from cancer research. RUSSELL VOUGHT, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: Well, it’s more about the NIH. And the NIH has been a bureaucracy that we believe has been weaponized against the American people. We saw that in COVID, the extent to which it doesn’t even know or is willing to grapple with the extent to which it funded the Wuhan Institute through the EcoHealth Alliance, and the fact that they pay far more than even Bill Gates does for indirect costs at all the bureaucracy. So this is something that is vitally important to be able to get a handle on. And we’re still going to give $ 28 billion to the NIH. BASH: Well, the American Cancer Society Action Network says, for the past 50 years, every significant medical breakthrough, especially in the treatment of cancer, has been linked to successful, robust federal investment. Is that philosophically something that you agree with? VOUGHT: We believe that we need a strong NIH. We think it’s important to have cancer research. We still do that under the president’s budget that he put up two or three weeks ago, not last night. Last night, Friday night, was the technical details. But as it pertains to the NIH, we actually want it to go to cancer research. We want it to go to the research that people think they have been funding through their tax dollars. We don’t want it to go to what we saw in the pandemic, when they were giving money to the EcoHealth Alliance. And we don’t want it to go to waste, fraud, and abuse by allowing universities to charge far more than they would ever get from Bill Gates’ foundation for things like office buildings, parking lots. It’s what called an indirect cost rate. Right now, we’re saying it needs to be 15 percent. Bill Gates says it’s 10 percent. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 or 40 percent right now. It’s far in excess of what the private sector would expect. BASH: I want to move on. But they — people who do this cancer research argue that the federal government funding those building blocks, even the office buildings, allows them to spend money on the actual lifesaving research. VOUGHT: We understand that the recipients of federal dollars always want more than what the federal government may be willing to do, but we think it’s important to look at the private sector and also get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse. BASH: So it is a philosophical switch that the private sector should be more responsible than the government? VOUGHT: It’s a philosophical perspective, unfortunately, based on the way this town has been run, to actually model the amount of reimbursement based on how the private sector does, how something like the Bill Gates Foundation would do, and to pare it down so that we’re not paying for largess at schools and universities that have these very — these well-off endowments. BASH: Just one last question about the funding for research. The administration is also eliminating $ 258 million in a research program to find a vaccine for HIV, just zeroing it out. Does that — do you not think it’s important to find a vaccine for HIV? VOUGHT: No, we think it’s important for vaccine work to continue to go on. There is a lot of consolidations and reforms within the proposal for the NIH. That will always continue. The issue is the extent to which we are paying for indirect costs and, quite frankly, the degree to which we need to pare down and make sure the NIH is not doing things that the American people would not support. BASH: Let’s talk about the budget. That was the budget to come, but I want to talk about what has been going on with DOGE and what Elon Musk has already done. He says it was $ 175 billion in cuts, and these are cuts to funding and programs that Congress already passed, already signed into law, the law of the land, before you took office. You say that you’re going to submit about $ 9 billion in cuts this week for Congress to approve to make those cuts you have already done official, largely in foreign aid and public broadcasting. But you’re hearing from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle that they want you to submit approval for all of the cuts that you have done through DOGE. Will you? VOUGHT: We might. We want to see how this first bill does. We want to make sure it’s actually passed. It’s the first of many rescissions bills. Some — we may not actually have to get Congress to pass the rescissions bills. BASH: Why? VOUGHT: Some, we have executive tools. We have impoundment that 200 years of presidents had the ability and the recognition that they had the ability to spend less than the ceiling. If you have $ 100 million that Congress says we want you to go and use for particular use and you can do it less, for 200 years, that was totally appropriate. And since the 1970s, that has changed and has led to massive waste, fraud and abuse. Secondly, the very Impoundment Control Act itself allows for a procedure called pocket rescissions later in the year to be able to bank some of these savings without the bill actually being passed. It’s a provision that has been rarely used, but it is there. And we intend to use all of these tools. We want Congress to pass it where it’s necessary. We also have executive tools. And that is something we’re going to be working with Congress. But it’s very important to pass this bill and to see whether there is a will in both the House and the Senate to secure the votes for it. BASH: Let me just unpack a couple of things that you said. First, you said that there is 200 years of precedent of presidents taking what Congress passed. And, of course, people who are watching this know that the Constitution says that it is Congress that has the power of the purse, which is why we’re even having this discussion. VOUGHT: The ceiling. They have the power… (CROSSTALK) BASH: Well, that’s what I want to ask you about. So there’s some dispute about the 200 years. But, most importantly, a law passed in 1974 because of this dispute that you mentioned, the Impoundment Act, and so because of that law, which has now been in place for more than 50 years, it is the requirement of the executive branch, except for in situations where you’re having discussions with Congress, to implement what is signed into law. I know you don’t believe that that is constitutional. So are you just doing this in order to get the Supreme Court to rule that unconstitutional? VOUGHT: We’re certainly not taking impoundment off the table. We’re not in love with the law. It’s a law that came after 200 years of precedent and history at the lowest moment of the executive branch. But even the very Impoundment Control Act, notice it’s not called the Impoundment Elimination Act. Even Congress at the time realized that impoundments were perfectly legal and appropriate. They were saying the Impoundment Control Act. Even the Impoundment Control Act allows for procedures that both require their assent on a rescissions bill — that’s the one that we’re sending up this — early this week — and also allow for pocket rescissions for those that come later in the fiscal year. BASH: They say you’re breaking — Congress says that you’re just breaking the law, full stop. VOUGHT: Well, they’re wrong. We’re not breaking the law. Every part of the federal government, each branch, has to look at the Constitution themselves and uphold it, and there’s tension between the branches. BASH: Yes. VOUGHT: And I don’t doubt that Congress is going to make accusations. Some of them come by their own watchdogs, but those watchdogs have been historically wrong. And that’s not going to stop us from moving forward to bank the DOGE cuts. BASH: I want to sort of bring this up, make your picture a little bit, because this is part of a very clear strategy that you have had for years and years and years in order to really cut the federal government and do it in any way you can, and also to pull as much power into the executive branch as possible. You’re very open about that. One of the things that you said in 2023 was specific to federal workers. I want to play that for our viewers. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VOUGHT: We want the bureaucrats to be dramatically affected. We want — when they woke up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work… (LAUGHTER) VOUGHT: … because they are so — they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma. (END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: Is that your goal as OMB director? (LAUGHTER) VOUGHT: Look, I love how you jerry-pick the quote on trauma. What I was referring to there was the bureaucracy. We do believe there’s weaponized bureaucracy. We do believe that there are people who have been part of administrations that are fundamentally woke and weaponized against the American people. When you have the EPA put a 77-year-old Navy veteran named Joe Robertson in jail for doing wild — ponds to fight wildfires on his lawn, that’s not just the FBI, it’s the EPA. And we do want to defund and put that — those bureaucracies out of business. But I have great people at OMB. There are great people at the FAA. There are great people at the NIH who are doing hard work and important public service activities. And I think it’s important to provide the full context of what people like me have said in the past. But this — we’re not going to be pushed — receive pushback from the notion that we’re going to dramatically change the deep, woke and weaponized administrative state. BASH: Yes. No, I mean, again, you have been very, very open about that being your goal. And that’s what we have seen with these DOGE cuts. You’re trying to not just sort of save money, but also change the scope and the way that these agencies are run and be less independent. I mean, you have been very clear about that.

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