Merkley Statement at Vought Nomination Hearing

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley – Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee – released the following statement as prepared for delivery for a hearing on the nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget:

“Good morning, Chairman Graham, and congratulations on your new role leading this Committee. I look forward to continuing to work with you this Congress in these new roles. And to the new Members of this Committee – Senator Cornyn, Senator Ricketts, and Senator Moreno – welcome.

“This Congress, the Senate Budget Committee will be the nerve-center of policy-making under the new Republican-controlled Congress. We’ll consider the Trump administration’s budget requests. We’ll be the center of the action when it comes to a Republican reconciliation bill or bills.

“From everything we’ve heard about those reconciliation bill or bills, we know that they will betray of the working-class voters who helped elect President Trump. The wealthy will get massive tax giveaways. While the working-class supporters of the President get stuck paying the bill. And President Trump will pay for those tax giveaways by slashing services that are the pathways to prosperity for working families, all while the wealthy get even wealthier. This is the great betrayal.

“Today, we’ll consider President-elect Trump’s nomination of Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, which will be central to those efforts.

“You’ll hear vastly different ideas for how to move our country forward. From my friends across the aisle – and from Mr. Vought – you’ll hear that we need to continue massive tax giveaways for the wealthy at the expense of working people. You’ll hear that we need non-partisan expertise in federal agencies to be replaced by blind political loyalty. And you’ll hear that we should sell-out the progress we’ve made for the environment, unions, and public health to, instead, serve big corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

“From our side of the aisle, you’ll hear about a different vision. That we must stand up for working families. That the wealthy need to pay their fair share in taxes. And that government should serve everyone, not just the privileged and powerful.

“For example, you’ll hear about how we need to expand Medicare’s ability to negotiate the price of 15 expensive drugs to bring down costs for seniors. After all, those drugs were developed with our taxpayer dollars!

“We should be getting the best price in the world for prescription drugs, not the worst! But you’ll hear our colleagues on the other side defend President Trump’s Executive Order to raise the cost of prescription drugs for folks on Medicare and Medicaid.

“Let me say that again: On his very first day in office, President Trump signed an Executive Order to raise the price of prescription drugs.

“All of that adds up to a betrayal of the very working families that President Trump promised to help if he was elected.

“We’ll debate these different visions for America – and there will be plenty of disagreement. But I hope, in addition to the disagreements I know we’ll have, that we can also work together to find common ground.

“With that, I turn to Mr. Vought. Welcome, and congratulations on your nomination. OMB Director is a position you’ve held before, so you know its ins and outs. I have no question about your intellect and experience, and I appreciate that you met with me in my office leading up to this hearing. That said, Mr. Vought, there’s no way around the fact that you are a fierce partisan warrior with, frankly, troubling views about how you would use this position, if confirmed, beyond the troubling ways you used it in the past.

“Shortly after you first took over as Acting OMB Director in 2019, the Washington Post reported: ‘[G]overnment officials said the results of his short tenure have been mixed, underscoring the tensions that come with having a deeply ideological operative thrust into a position with complicated, often nonpartisan challenges.’ This turned out to be spot on.

“Your final budget request on behalf of the Trump Administration, for Fiscal Year 2021, included: $920 billion in cuts to Medicaid; nearly $300 billion in cuts social safety net programs

that serve as pathways to prosperity – programs like: nutrition assistance, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child Tax Credit; $170 billion in cuts to college affordability initiatives; and zeroing-out programs, like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and Community Development Block Grants. Meanwhile, you called for well over $1 trillion in tax giveaways, most of which – 64 percent – would have gone to the top 10 percent. And the top 1 percent would have taken home a quarter of a trillion dollars. Meanwhile, working families can’t afford eggs.

“The last budget you wrote for President Trump betrayed working families – and it seems certain that the next budget you write for President Trump will once again betray the working families who voted for him. In addition, you were central to the corrupt withholding of foreign assistance to Ukraine that got then-President Trump impeached for the first time.

“You, Mr. Vought, ran the agency that illegally paused the funds. But when I asked about it in pre-hearing written questions, you blamed a subordinate, writing that you ‘delegated’ the authority to sign-off on the pause to a ‘Program Associate Director’ – a political appointee you oversaw, rather than the career staffer, as had long been the norm. I find this deflection of blame deeply troubling.

“Try as you might to evade responsibility, you were complicit in the President’s decisions that got him impeached. Not only that, you’ve argued that Presidents have unilateral authority to impound funds, never mind the Impoundment Control Act or the Constitution, and it’s clear that you would do the same thing again.

“It’s troubling that you’re pushing for a power that would allow President Trump to steal money from social safety net programs for working families so that he can give that money to his billionaire friends. And it’s troubling that you would defy laws passed by Congress and try to obliterate Congress’ ability to hold President Trump accountable for betraying his promises to the American people. And you doubled-down on these plans when your think tank, of which you were the founder and president, put out a budget plan that would cut more than a half-trillion dollars from nutrition assistance programs that help vulnerable families put food on the table. And it’s troubling that you’ve called for the ‘abolition’ of abortion rights, and that you ‘don’t believe’ in ‘exceptions.’

“Finally, it’s beyond troubling that in a written answer you provided to me in advance of this hearing – with zero evidence and in defiance of scores of separate court cases – you wrote: ‘I believe that the 2020 election was rigged.’

“All of this adds up to one thing: a betrayal of working families. That’s not what the American people voted for. I think the Director of OMB should be someone who respects the rule of law, not the rule of one man; who is guided by objective facts, not partisan ideology; and who serves working families, not corporate billionaires.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to questioning Mr. Vought.”

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