Bishop undergoes Senate hearing for OMB deputy director

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a confirmation hearing Tuesday morning for former Republican North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop, the nominee for deputy White House budget director in the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Troy Edgar, the deputy Homeland Security (DHS) secretary nominee, also appeared before the committee. He served as the department’s chief financial officer from 2020 to 2021 during President Donald Trump’s first term.

US Sen. Ted Budd, R-NC, introduced Bishop and talked about their first meeting when Budd was in his late 20’s running a landscaping and janitorial business while Bishop was a Mecklenburg County commissioner, fast-forwarding to the time when they both served in Congress.

“I’ve seen firsthand his thoughtfulness, his deep understanding of the issues, his love for our country, his care for people, and his commitment to stopping runaway spending and getting the federal budget under control,” Budd said of Bishop. “I have no doubt that Dan will bring the same tenacity to the job at OMB that he has shown throughout his career both as a litigator and his time serving the people of North Carolina.”

Bishop served for five years in Congress before running for North Carolina Attorney General and losing to fellow former congressman Jeff Jackson, a Democrat, in November’s General Election.

Trump nominated Bishop in December.

He said it has been an honor to be nominated by Trump for such an important agency that crafts the president’s budget, manages and coordinates it among federal agencies, along with implementing the president’s regulatory agenda and is a critical part of ensuring that the government responds to the democratically elected president to respond to the will of the American people, who want accountability, transparency, and an end to the waste and the Washington status quo and not to be entrenched Washington interests and the political establishment.

“They recognized in this past election that our nation was at a crossroads on the precipice of either renewed greatness or ruin,” Bishop said. “In that precarious moment, they placed their confidence in President Donald Trump to usher in a new golden age for America. I’m here on behalf of that mission.”

Questioning and statements ran along party lines, with Democrats like Sen. Gary Peters, MI, who told Bishop that his record and views, including support for legislation that would make all federal employees at will, give him serious pause about how he would manage the federal workforce. He also said he had questions about Bishop’s record for what he said was “disregard for independent oversight including retaliatory actions by revealing the name of a whistleblower.”

Peters and Sen. Andy Kim, D-NJ, would ask Bishop if the recent firings of several civil service employees were indiscriminate, to which he replied “no,” adding that the change might have been necessary after those advising Trump took a look at the size of the federal workforce.

Bishop said that he supports President Trump’s views, which include impoundment or not spending money that has been appropriated by Congress, and that the decision-making would involve lawyers, not him, when Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-MI, asked if he believes that the President has the ability to spend appropriated dollars in different ways than they were appropriated.

She would later ask if Trump would have the right to take money out of Social Security to which Bishop said he doesn’t believe Trump could stop benefits from being paid.

“I don’t think any American, red, blue, purple, the whole thing, should trust that these programs that they’ve worked their entire life for are safe if you believe you can do anything that you want,” Stotkin shot back at Bishop.

Bishop replied that there are distinctions to be made and referenced President Harry Truman exercised impoundment.

Slotkin said firing and hiring someone back is indiscriminate and that the whole process is ‘scaring the crap out of people on the benefits they’ve worked their entire life for.’

Committee chair Rand Paul, R-KY, said the fearmongering should be put aside since to his knowledge, no one in the Trump administration has called for using Social Security money for another purpose.

“So that’s a hypothetical that is not only untrue it is promoting fear,” he said.

He added that there has been some good coming out of the investigation into agencies like USAID, which the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has found gave $2 million in taxpayer money for things like sex changes in Guatemala.

“We should debate not whether Elon Musk is Satan, but maybe whether or not we should spend $3 million out of State Department funds on girl-centric climate change in Brazil, whether there’s been $30,000 on a trans opera in Colombia, $25,000 on a trans comic book in Peru, $660,000 on microaggressions among obese Latin X,” Paul said, adding that none of this would have been made public if Musk hadn’t found it.

He also stated that any money that has been found and saved as a result of these investigations should be used toward filling up the hole in the $2 trillion deficit before sending any of it back to the people, as Musk had wanted to send $5,000 to each individual.

Bishop told Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, during his line of questioning, that he thinks the budget could be balanced and compared what he did as governor of Florida, going line by line of the state’s budget as to what Trump and Musk are doing now with the drastic changes going on at the federal level.

He also told Sen. Joni Ernst, R-IA, founder of the Senate DOGE caucus, that he would work with Russell Vought, Director of OBM, to get the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to submit annual reporting requirements.

She also added that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington seem to be much more upset that DOGE is finding more waste, fraud, and abuse than what has been funded.

“There are nearly fifty federal agencies right now that are not reporting their spending on usaspending.gov, accounting for more than $5 billion each year, so Congressman Bishop, every American can be one of our dogged deputies across the United States, but they actually need OMB’s help to do that,” Ernst said. “Will you require all agencies to provide timely, accurate, and complete reporting of their spending?’

He said he’s learned a great deal about it since being nominated and researching it and will pay close attention if he is confirmed.

When questioned by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, Bishop said under OBM’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OHIRA) that he would follow the President’s policy, which is also being followed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that Title X funding will not go to abortion providers.

He also said that he would give attention to the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funding for elective abortions, and that he would comply with the Weldon Amendment, which prevents discrimination against healthcare providers who have conscientious objections to abortion and be and be an advocate for the President’s policies for funding pregnancy care centers.

Paul ended the hearing by saying that although they really want to send the message to the public that Congress was actually going to cut spending, he wasn’t convinced that it would happen.

I’m already predicting the public is going to be disappointed come September because what’s going to happen is every day we have the news of firings and savings, but the deficit this year is still going to be $2 trillion because we haven’t structurally done something,” he said. “Now people will say it’s hard and that Congress isn’t any good at their job. They’re feckless, and all of that’s true, but we still have to try.”

The committee will meet again on Thursday to vote on the nominations. If successful, the names will go on for a vote in the Senate.

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