Trump Budget Chief Hampers Biden Transition With Ban on Meetings

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s budget office is blocking Joe Biden’s transition team from meeting with key staff to help prepare the president-elect’s first annual spending plan, a move that could delay major proposals.

The director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, has argued internally that the agency needs to focus on finishing new regulations the Trump administration plans to publish before the president leaves office, according to people familiar with the matter.

But experts on the federal budget say Vought’s refusal to give Biden’s team access to career OMB officials is unprecedented and could hurt Biden’s efforts to roll out big-picture, forward-looking ideas on everything from health care to climate change to taxes at the start of his four-year term.

The career OMB staff could provide Biden’s team information such as cost estimates and details on existing programs.

An OMB spokeswoman disputed that the agency hasn’t been fully cooperative and said in a statement that the Biden team had received all information it had requested about ongoing programs. OMB has held 45 meetings with Biden officials, the spokeswoman said.

But the spokeswoman said that directing the agency’s staff and resources to help Biden’s team draft its budget is not OMB’s responsibility. The agency is focused on advancing Trump’s policy agenda, she said.

Biden complained Monday that Trump administration officials at OMB and the Pentagon were hampering his transition, but he didn’t detail what they had done. The people familiar with Vought’s actions asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

“Right now we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas,” Biden said after a meeting with his national security advisers and transition officials. “It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.”

No administration from either party has ever prevented its successor from meeting with OMB staff, said William Hoagland, a former top Republican Senate aide who worked on budget policy and appropriations for more than 25 years.

“Not having access to OMB and preparing their budget will further delay any actions they want to pursue. There will be a serious delay in the incoming Biden administration’s ability to put forward their budget,” Hoagland said in an interview.

The OMB spokeswoman said the information the agency has provided to Biden’s team included a briefing on Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to accelerate coronavirus vaccine development.

“OMB’s refusal to cooperate impairs our ability to identify opportunities to maximize the relief going out to Americans during the pandemic, and it leaves us in the dark as it relates to Covid expenditures and other gaps,” said Yohannes Abraham, executive director of the Biden transition team.

Incoming presidential administrations typically begin their budget planning well before the new president is inaugurated on Jan. 20, in order to be able to send the document to Congress relatively soon thereafter. Congress decides how the government spends money, not the president, but the president’s budget is an annual statement of his priorities and is a vital source of information on the government’s activities.

The annual document is due to Congress on the first Monday in February, but in recent years has often been delayed.

Trump submitted his first budget to Congress about four months after he took office, on May 23, 2017. President Barack Obama submitted an initial budget proposal about one month after he took office, on February 26, 2009, and provided additional detail in May.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.