Politico reports:

In an administration full of disruptors, Russ Vought is a different beast.

Vought, as head of the White House’s budget arm, has assembled one of the most powerful and exacting teams in Washington, all aimed at slashing the federal bureaucracy and ensuring what’s left bends to the administration’s will.

He has increased the number of policy lieutenants typically operating at the Office of Management and Budget and supercharged their mandate to ensure White House priorities are pushed into each agency.

That handiwork is now in motion as the Trump administration targets funding cuts to what it calls “Democrat agencies” and threatens more mass layoffs called “reductions in force,” or RIFs. On Friday, Vought said that $11 billion in Army Corps of Engineers projects in mostly blue states would be paused.

Vought’s expanded policy army, the nearly dozen “Program Associate Directors” or PADs, are charged with combing line-by-line through the nearly $7 trillion federal budget for programs to slash and helping him play what he’s called “budgetary twister” (finding money to blunt the most politically painful parts of the shutdown).

Beyond numbers, Vought’s lieutenants also are steeped-in-policy wonks who each lead an office composed of dozens of political and career servants. All of this positions Vought’s OMB as a potent political strike force.

“Pound for pound, they’ve got the strongest team of subject matter experts and experienced political people as well as policy experts across the government. It’s probably the strongest OMB that’s ever been assembled,” said Joe Grogan, former director of the White House domestic policy council during the first Trump administration.

OMB declined comment.

Under the direction of Mick Mulvaney, director of OMB in President Donald Trump’s first term, PADs “were not as empowered,” said one former Trump White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. “Now, they’re wielding the bully pulpit to say, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’”

The person said these positions are “much more enabled to unilaterally act and carry out the direction than they were in the past, where everyone was trying to be much more cooperative.”

They also reveal a microcosm of the Trump White House’s interests, such as slashing climate and diversity programs as well as restructuring federal procurements. [Continue reading…]