‘Absolutely Evil’: Maryland Senator Confronts OMB Director
Russell Vought has overseen administration’s dismantling of federal government
There is probably no other state that’s seen more pain and suffering from the Trump administration’s wholesale dismantling of the federal government than Maryland.
Located just outside Washington DC, Maryland is home to tens of thousands of federal employees who commute to work every day in the nation’s capital. And it’s home itself to a number of federal agencies in its own right, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration and the Social Security Administration.
So it was that one of Maryland’s Democratic senators Thursday confronted one of the chief architects of the damage done to the federal government by the Trump administration.
As director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought has overseen not only the large-scale federal dismantling that took place last year under the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, but also a number of other actions taken to curb federal health research, investments in public health, and many others that have sharply curtailed federal activities and cut massive amounts of the federal workforce.
So when Vought was before lawmakers Thursday, Sen Angela Alsobrooks let him have it.
She sought to take him to task for what she described as “depraved and draconian” actions by the administration.
“Director Vought, I have been waiting to have the opportunity to come back, face-to-face, with you to ask for an explanation for what I regard as absolutely depraved — depraved — I use that word again and draconian actions to decimate our public institutions, politicize federal grant programs, to stall funding for NIH, and for [Centers for Disease Control] public health programs, harming our research institutions, [and] dismantling the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau],” Alsobrooks said.
“The 160,000 federal employees in my state — these are the patriots of our country who have worked for decades,” she added. “They did not care whether the president is a Democrat or Republican. They are here to serve the American people, and they will not forget how they were treated, and neither will I.”
Referring to a past remark in which Vought said he wanted to put federal workers “in trauma,” Alsobrooks asked, “So, I ask you, is that the kind of trauma you were talking about? Did you intend to sow terror for parents who need to provide for their families?”
View a clip of Alsobrooks confronting Vought here:
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