Ranking Member Boyle Slams OMB Director Vought for Dodging Budget Committee

WASHINGTON, DC — At today’s House Budget Committee hearing, Ranking Member Brendan F. Boyle (PA-02) slammed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought for continuing to dodge testifying before the Committee 15 months into the Congress.

Boyle argued that Vought must testify before the Committee to answer for the administration’s deeply unpopular record, including a weakening economy, rising costs, and fiscal decisions that have added trillions to the debt. He said Vought must also answer questions about Trump’s reckless war in Iran, noting that reports indicate the Department of Defense may require as much as $200 billion to fund the conflict—resources that could instead be used to lower health care costs for millions of Americans.

Remarks as delivered and video are below:

(Click for video of remarks as delivered)

Ranking Member Boyle's remarks as delivered:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank all of the invited guests here, the witnesses for taking the time out. I first want to start actually asking for a little help from this Committee and the public at large. We have someone who's gone missing. Perhaps you could help me find him. His name is Russell Vought.

He is the OMB Director and for 15 months, Mr. Vought has been MIA. He is supposed to testify before this Committee, as every previous OMB director has done, including Mr. Vought himself, the first time he was OMB Director. Here we are 15 months into this Congress, 15 months this Committee has been waiting for the OMB Director to testify.

Where is he? So if anyone spots this gentleman, if you could call the House Budget Committee and let us know, because we would like to know why exactly he is so afraid to testify before this committee. Other Trump cabinet secretaries have testified before this committee and withstood public scrutiny.

Why is Russell Vought so afraid to come before us in public and answer questions about his record and the record of this administration? Perhaps he doesn't want to talk about the fact that according to fresh new polling this past week, this is the single most unpopular president when it comes to the handling of the economy since George W. Bush during the Great Recession.

When asked in a poll by Reuters about President Trump's handling of the economy, do you approve or disapprove, only 29 percent of Americans approve. That is far lower than each of the last three presidencies. Again, you have to go back 20 years to the Great Recession to find numbers that low. Different poll - Yahoo-YouGov - Trump handling on cost of living, approve 26 percent. Other polls from Fox News and CBS News finding similarly low results.

So maybe Russ Vought doesn't want to be asked about that. Maybe Russ Vought is afraid to testify before this committee because he doesn't want to be asked about the Republican tax bill that they passed and the president signed into law last July, which included of course, the largest healthcare cuts in American history, with CBO projecting that 15 million Americans will lose their health care as a result of that bill. Maybe he doesn't want to come before us because relevant to our hearing today, he doesn't want to be asked about the $4.7 trillion increase in the national debt that is a result of the Republican tax bill.

No other piece of legislation in American history increased deficit and debt more than the Republican tax bill they passed this past summer. Or perhaps he doesn't want to answer questions about the illegal impoundments that he executed last spring, which included withholding $11 billion in disaster relief funding to states or finally, and this list could go on and on, maybe he doesn't want to address in public what the full cost of this Iran war will be.

I understand there's a secret meeting this afternoon that Budget Committee Republicans are holding with officials from DoD. I think the American people deserve to know, and we deserve to ask to get this information, what the full cost of this war of choice will be.

We have heard publicly the figure $200 billion. That is a massive sum. That is enough money that you could have extended the Obamacare tax credits in full for seven years. So again, the list goes on and on, and actually come to think of it, I might have answered my own question. I actually can understand why Mr. Vought has gone missing, because those would be very difficult questions to answer.

Finally, in the 30 seconds I have left, let me say this, and I've said this publicly in previous hearings before. I've said it in private to a number of my Republican friends on the other side of the aisle, like Mr. Arrington, Mr. Smucker, and others. At some point I agree, and at some point soon we do need to tackle the real and growing problem of deficit and debt.

And I'm looking forward to having that discussion. But let's make sure it is a discussion truly based on facts, and if we're going to go down the road to the first step of setting the goal, then we need to very quickly get to step two and talk about what that plan looks like.

We don't want this to be, Mr. Chairman, what I've done for the last 30 years, and that is every New Year's Day have the resolution that this will be the year I finally get into shape. As I have come to learn, without an actionable plan, that continues to be an unfilled resolution every single year.

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