Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russell Vought arrives to testify during a hearing of the House Budget Committee about President Trump's budget for Fiscal Year 2021, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Trump's pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget faced a tough grilling from Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday.

Until a federal judge stops it, the “pause” in grants and loans will be really bad news for poor people in need of Medicaid or food stamps.

This is the practice of presidents refusing to spend funds that Congress has appropriated, shifting power to the White House. To take a current example, Mr Trump has issued an executive order putting an “immediate pause” on billions of dollars appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2021 and a climate law from 2022.

You are going to swear an oath to the Constitution, not to Donald Trump, just like any other confirmed official," Slotkin reminded Vought

Buried within one of the dozens of executive orders that President Donald Trump issued in his first days in office is a section titled “Terminating the Green New Deal.” As presidential directives go, this one initially seemed like a joke. The Green New Deal exists mostly in the dreams of climate activists; it has never been fully enacted into law.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer took a small victory lap around the White House’s decision to rescind an order for a temporary freeze on federal aid, vowing that the move was the first of many fights Democrats were ready to wage against the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump’s dramatic pause of federal grants and loans is queuing up a Supreme Court showdown over the Constitution that will test the court’s recently muscular commitment to curb executive power.

President Donald Trump’s administration issued a memo Monday ordering widespread federal assistance to be temporarily paused, as Trump and his allies have argued he can block government funds that Congress has already authorized, despite a federal law forbidding it.

The order to pause nearly all U.S. financial assistance for executive branch review poses a constitutional test of the president’s impoundment powers.

If Russell Vought is confirmed as Office of Management and Budget director, he will continue to enact and accelerate the radical, sweeping agenda he began to implement in that same position during the final two years of the first Trump administration.

The Trump administration backed down Wednesday from its sloppy order — after the edict was put on hold by a federal judge — imposing a sweeping federal spending freeze. But even as it backtracked, the administration made clear it was not retreating from its audacious assertion that the president, not Congress, gets the final say on spending.