WASHINGTON — The Trump White House’s budget office is tightening a rule for the distribution of up to $1 trillion in federal grant-making authority, ensuring taxpayer dollars are better protected from use by non-citizens and speeding up the process by which wasteful spending can be canceled.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will propose the fixes to address “significant flaws” in the grants, at least 190,000 of which date from former President Joe Biden’s final year in office, officials told The Post Thursday.
One official said that the expected cuts will have the greatest effect on the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees roughly $85 billion in grant spending annually, and the Department of Transportation, which handles roughly $45 billion per year.
Under the proposal from OMB Director Russ Vought, political appointees will now be given final sign-off over federal monies and performance will be closely monitored, including with the use of the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay registry.
“In the past, you got yourself a nice grant that might last three or four or five years for a certain amount every quarter or every year — and that’s just an invitation for underperformance and under-delivery,” another OMB official said, “because you’re guaranteed a payment regardless.”
“So we’ll wipe those out and, instead, you’re going to get paid for performance,” the official added. “You get a grant awarded with the policy shared from the president, signed off by a political appointee, and it damn well better produce, otherwise it could be canceled for cause.”
Federal award recipients must also go through E-Verify system to ensure only American citizens receive the money, while English-language requirements will be imposed for all funding announcements.
The shift will allow the feds to play a larger role in vetting grantees that eventually get taxpayer money through state programs.
Additionally, valid complaints of fraud filed against grant recipients must be referred to inspectors general and DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office no more than 10 days after being flagged by agencies, rather than being handled internally through investigations that could last years.
All other grants not aligned with President Trump’s executive actions and polices will be suspended or terminated, if they haven’t already been cut.
Those include awards focusing on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, promoting “gender ideology” or renewable energy programs commonly referred to by Republicans as the “Green New Scam.”
“If a grant — even after it went through all these checks, even after it was qualified, even after money was going out the door — veers off from the commitment to stick with presidential policies, then … we’re able to turn it off,” the second official noted.
“Some of the worst abuses of the grantmaking system will be eliminated and literally save the taxpayers tons of money, as well as making sure the federal government is not funding efforts to go after the culture and values of American citizens.”
The OMB official added that the safeguards will prevent recurrances of fraud like those which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, according to the feds.
The Trump administration has significantly cracked down on federal funding to taxpayer-funded welfare programs in blue states, freezing more than $10 billion in large block grant programs in January before getting tied up in the courts.
A task force led by Vice President JD Vance also revoked nearly $260 million in Medicaid funding from Minnesota in February, citing fraud concerns.