The Senate Budget Committee will hold a confirmation hearing next week on President Donald Trump's nomination of Hal Duncan as deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget, Committee Chair Lindsey Graham said Tuesday.
Duncan currently heads legislative affairs at the White House budget office and was nominated to replace Dan Bishop, who was recently confirmed as a U.S. attorney; the OMB is known as the "nerve center" of an administration.
The new nominee is expected to field questions about his stance on whether the Executive Branch has the power to withhold funding Congress has appropriated, as OMB continues to hold back billions of dollars more than 16 months after Trump's inauguration.
Even Republicans on the Budget Committee have accused OMB in recent months of continuing to illegally "impound" federal cash. During a hearing this spring, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) chided White House budget director Russ Vought for not releasing hundreds of millions of dollars Congress previously approved to help states fund anti-poverty services.