Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., speaking at a Capitol news conference in January 2023, is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to run the Labor Department.
President Donald Trump, left, listens as his acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in October 2019.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he’ll nominate billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, an advocate for deficit reduction, to serve as his next treasury secretary, one of several personnel decisions that he unveiled as he closed out the workweek.
Trump also said he would nominate Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, the same position he held during Trump’s first presidency.
Although Bessent is closely aligned with Wall Street and could earn bipartisan support, Vought is known as a Republican hardliner on budget and cultural issues.
Trump said Bessent would “help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States,” while Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.”
After announcing his choices for key financial posts, Trump kept up the pace of what has been a breakneck transition process.
Trump picked Rep. Lori Chavez- DeRemer of Oregon, a Republican who is considered a stalwart union ally, as his labor secretary. He also said he would nominate Scott Turner, a former football player who worked in Trump’s first administration, to serve as his housing secretary.
More choices were named for health and national security positions.
In less than three weeks since the election, Trump has announced decisions for almost his entire Cabinet.
Nation’s debt a priority
Bessent, 62, is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, after having worked on and off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary.
He told Bloomberg in August that attacking the U.S. national debt should be a priority, which includes slashing government programs and other spending.
“This election cycle is the last chance for the U.S. to grow our way out of this mountain of debt without becoming a sort of European-style socialist democracy,” he said then.
As of Nov. 8, the national debt stands at $35.94 trillion, with both the Trump and Biden administrations having added to it.
Even as he pushes to lower the national debt by stopping spending, Bessent has backed extending provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which Trump signed into law in his first year in office.
Nearly all of the law’s provisions are set to expire at the end of 2025.
Before becoming a Trump donor and adviser, Bessent donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s, notably Al Gore’s presidential run. He also worked for
George Soros, a major supporter of Democrats. Bessent had an influential role in Soros’ London operations, including his famous 1992 bet against the pound, which generated huge profits on “Black Wednesday,” when the pound was delinked from European currencies.
Bessent previously told Bloomberg that he views tariffs as a “one-time price adjustment” and “not inflationary,” and he said tariffs imposed during a second Trump administration would be directed primarily at China. And he wrote in a Fox News op-ed this week that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives,” such as encouraging allies to spend more on defense or deterring military aggression.
America ‘a nation under God’
Vought, 48, was the head of the Office of Management and Budget from mid-2020 to the end of Trump’s first term in 2021, having previously served as the acting director and deputy director.
After Trump’s initial term ended, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that describes its mission as renewing “a consensus of America as a nation under God.”
The Center for Renewing America released its own 2023 budget proposal entitled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government.”
The proposal envisioned $11.3 trillion worth of spending reductions over 10 years and about $2 trillion in income tax cuts in order to bring the budget into surplus by 2032.
“The immediate threat facing the nation is the fact that the people no longer govern the country; instead, the government itself is increasingly weaponized against the people it is meant to serve,” Vought wrote in the introduction.
Vought’s proposed budget plan would cut spending on food aid through the Agriculture Department.
There would be $3.3 trillion in spending reductions in the Health and Human Services Department in large part through how Medicaid and Medicare funds are distributed.
It also contains about $642 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act. The budgets for the Housing and Urban Development and Education departments would also be cut.
Endorses right to organize
Trump’s choice for labor secretary, Chavez-DeRemer, 56, narrowly lost her re-election bid earlier this month. She received strong backing from union members in her district.
Chavez-DeRemer is one of a few House Republicans to endorse the “Protecting the Right to Organize” or PRO Act that would allow more workers to conduct organizing campaigns and would add penalties for companies that violate workers’ rights.
The act would also weaken “rightto-work” laws that allow employees in more than half the states to avoid participating in or paying dues to unions that represent workers at their places of employment.
Trump said in a statement that she would help “ensure that the Labor Department can unite Americans of all backgrounds behind our Agenda for unprecedented National Success.”
In addition, Trump added to his health team on Friday evening. He chose Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a general practitioner and Fox News contributor, to be surgeon general; Dr.
Dave Weldon, a former Republican congressman from Florida, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, as head of the Food and Drug Administration.
Trump previously said he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.
Alex Wong was named as principal deputy national security adviser, while Sebastian Gorka will serve as senior director for counterterrorism.
Wong worked on issues involving Asia during Trump’s first term, and Gorka is a conservative commentator who spent less than a year in Trump’s first White House.