Russell Vought, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, testified in a second confirmation hearing Wednesday, this time before the Senate Budget Committee.
Watch the full confirmation hearing in the player above.
Vought, who served briefly as OMB director during Trump's first term, appeared last week before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Vought was closely involved with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump's second term from which the Republican nominee tried to distance himself during the presidential campaign. The role of budget director oversees the building of the president's proposed budget and reviews proposed regulations.
During the hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked Vought whether he would advocate to Trump that "it is wrong to cut Medicaid, cut health care for low income Americans, for the children and for the elderly and give tax breaks to the very richest people in our society."
Vought responded that he believes one of the problems with the Medicaid program is that while it's intended to be for people who are poor, with disabilities or are older, "we have able-bodied, working adults on the program that are benefitting from a higher match rate than the populations that it was originally designed for."
Sanders also repeatedly pressed Vought on whether he believed health care is a human right, which Vought declined to answer directly, instead saying that he believed it is important for government to spend Americans' taxpayer dollars on health care that serves the people who are in the programs.
He added that he believed the position of OMB director is to implement the president's agenda.
"To the extent that he ran on lowering prescription drugs, that's a priority of the administration," Vought said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Vought about government whistleblowers, especially those who expose improper government spending and action.
"I think the whistleblowers play an enormous role in helping us weed out waste, fraud and abuse," Vought responded.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., grilled Vought on impoundment, where the president declines to spend money Congress has agreed to appropriate. In 2023, during his campaign for president, Trump said he would use impoundment to cut inflation and stop government spending. He has also argued that the law is unconstitutional, and Vought has previously advocated for expanded presidential powers on impoundment.
Vought said he believed the law is unconstitutional, though he acknowledged to Murrey that no court has ruled it so. Murray pushed back, taking her questioning time back to speak directly to other committee members.
"We work all the time on [the Senate Appropriations Committee], where I am ranking member, to come to an agreement," Murray said.
Turning to the budget committee's chairman, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, she said, "Senator Graham, you and I work on agreements and we decide, 'Yeah, OK, we'll both vote for this, we have an agreement. How can we ever have an agreement in the future if a president, whoever he or her [sic] may be in the future, has say over that, saying 'Never mind, I'm not going to pay for this part of it.'"
Many of Trump's nominees have yet to appear before Senate committees for their confirmation hearings. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the only Trump nominee to be confirmed by the full Senate so far.