Ed Markey: “I rise tonight in opposition to the nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget…”

“I rise tonight in opposition to the nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget, also known as OMB. My colleagues and I have been holding the Senate floor since yesterday to sound the alarm on this dangerous nomination. Russell Vought is the architect of Project 2025, the hateful, racist, sexist policy roadmap at the center of Trump's campaign. Mr. Vought has been working behind the scenes for years on policies to consolidate power, undermine the critical services that the Federal Government provides to the American people, and undermine Congress's power of the purse. When Vought was at the Office of Management and Budget during the last Trump administration, he demonstrated a complete lack of regard for our branch of government--the Congress. He was responsible for illegally withholding and delaying billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated funding and now is planning to ratchet up this whole destructive power to a new level in 2025. While Vought was withholding the funding that he and Trump don't like, he revealed a 2021 budget plan that showed us all the terrible things that he did like. That plan, authored by Russell Vought, proposed--listen to this--$500 billion in cuts to Medicare, $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid, $71 billion cuts to Social Security.…”