On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” host Lawrence O’Donnell stated that the OMB memo on a temporary pause on some programs, written by acting OMB Director Matthew Vaeth, who is “actually a holdover from the Biden administration” and also served in the office during the first Trump administration and whose OMB career began in 1997, “reads like someone who’s trying to get caught.” And “If his mission was to sit down and say, I am going to write the most ridiculous, politically-loaded version of this memo so the courts will have no choice but to rule it unconstitutional, this is what you’d write.”
O’Donnell stated, “When I finally got my hands on the full memo and read the whole thing, and I see that it’s written by the acting Director, who’s actually a holdover from the Biden administration, career Office of Management and Budget person who’s been there a very long time, it actually reads like someone who’s trying to get caught. If his mission was to sit down and say, I am going to write the most ridiculous, politically-loaded version of this memo so the courts will have no choice but to rule it unconstitutional, this is what you’d write.”
House Budget Committee Ranking Member Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) responded that the Senate should reject Russell Vought’s nomination to run OMB and Vought has “very detailed plans, that he put down on paper, to go down this impoundment route, as well as do other sort of extreme actions to essentially scale back the government back to what it was before the dawn of the 20th century.”
O’Donnell then stated, “This memo does seem to reflect exactly what we know to be the incoming director’s thinking.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
