Vought had previewed the strategy to The Washington Post before it was used, calling it part of “a reckoning of House conservatives” who are angry with McCarthy over how he handled the debt bill.
Vought, 47, president of a new pro-Donald Trump think tank called the Center for Renewing America, has helped make life difficult for McCarthy since he launched his speaker bid following last year’s midterm elections.
Vought advised members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and other GOP members wary of McCarthy to extract concessions in exchange for supporting his speakership in the closely divided chamber. That led to the protracted 15 rounds of voting before McCarthy eventually prevailed.
Among the concessions: a new House panel that Vought helped push with a mission to investigate the alleged “weaponization of the federal government” under President Biden.
In the lead-up to the debt ceiling negotiations, Vought also provided a fire hose of advice to House Republicans on how to extract spending cuts and other concessions in exchange for their support. That included a 104-page memo that proposed specific spending levels for every federal agency.
“America cannot be saved unless the current grip of woke and weaponized government is broken,” Vought wrote in the proposal. “That is the central and immediate threat facing the country — the one that all our statesmen must rise tall to vanquish. The battle cannot wait.”
Some of his advice was reflected in the Limit, Save, Grow Act passed by the House in April as an opening gambit in debt ceiling negotiations. That bill went nowhere in the Senate, and the bipartisan bill that later passed was far lighter on spending cuts and other concessions from Biden.
Vought was a polarizing figure long before the current debt limit fight. His tenure in the Trump administration was marked by controversy over his past incendiary comments about Muslims and a decision to implement a freeze on aid to Ukraine that put him at the center of the first Trump impeachment.
His new think tank advocates on hot-button culture war issues, such as “exposing critical race theory.” In March, he co-authored Reference
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