In-Town Pool Note 1: Vought at the sticks

OMB Director Russ Vought took questions from a small group of reporters. Below are the key quotes. Let me know if you have questions.

"Look, we're just getting started in the Senate. Our focus has been on the House." Largely sidestepped questions on path forward in the Senate.

"We're really excited about the package that just occurred is the extent to which it's a very careful balance, and, you know, it was not easy to get to where we were this morning."

"Obviously, the Senate is going to want to put its mark on it." There is a "certain coalition" to accomplish what the president wants. He said they still want to get it to his desk by July 4.

On Moody's credit downgrade: "Moody's is catching up with their other rating agencies by being irrelevant for the last 15 years. So, I think there's a timing aspect in what they were trying to do to sink the president's tax cut. ...

The notion that this was in any way harmful to debt and deficits is fundamentally untrue, and I think that's what was inaccurate about the timing of the report."

On Freedom Caucus: "The House Freedom Caucus did an incredible job of getting this the savings, more savings earlier in the window, by bringing the work requirements up, by making sure there's more of the IRA repeal, the green New Deal earlier in the window that will allow us — we were originally ay $1.6 trillion, we'll probably at $1.9 trillion when this is finally updated.

"We're going to do everything we can executively to make sure that one of their main concerns was that, with this opportunity to do something big on Medicaid, that more States did not come in and expand under Medicaid under Obamacare. We never thought that was a real argument. We thought they had that argument in good faith

On SALT: "It's a good template for what we think both the House will need to do again and what the Senate — should inform the Senate conversations.

On federal layoffs if court TRO is lifted/preliminary injunction not granted: "All of these RIFS have been lawful. They've been an effort to scale down the federal workforce with care, with wisdom about what's necessary to statutorily conduct and operate agencies. And I think at the end of the day, wherever they're at, they're going to be successful when they get to the Supreme Court."

On Elon leaving: "We talk every day; our teams are in lock step. And, you, there's a creativity and paradigm shift with regard to Doge, and we're trying to take what they've been able to do and lock it into permanent savings wherever we possibly can."

Ian Kullgren

Senior Reporter

Bloomberg Industry Group

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