'It's A little Ironic': Glenn Ivey Presses OMB Director Russell Vought On Request For 20 New Positions

Forbes Breaking News

During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) questioned OMB Director Russell Vought on his request to add 20 additional positions.

Transcript

00:00Can the turnout recognize Mr. Ivey for his five minutes?

00:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:05Good afternoon.

00:07I was shocked when I heard you say that all government employees should be treated with respect

00:12because that is absolutely not what I saw on the ground level.

00:17I mean, I saw people crying when they were coming out of USAID.

00:20I think they'd been given 15-minute intervals to retrieve their belongings.

00:23I talked to people who were probationary employees who'd been given these mass emails

00:31that they're going to be terminated.

00:33They'd quit jobs and moved from other places, sold their houses to come do this work

00:37in reasonable reliance, often for the government to work for the federal government

00:43and desire to serve their country.

00:45And they were unceremoniously pushed out the door.

00:48And when you said, I know you want to know what career staff thinks,

00:52that was a shocker to me, too, because many of these people,

00:55when they were being forced out, were trying to call and find out what their status was,

01:00whether they were going to be able to come back to work or not,

01:02when they would be terminated, all of those things.

01:04And that still goes on, and they don't get the answers from you all.

01:08So, you know, I appreciate your view of what's going on,

01:12but you've got to know that it's entirely different from the standpoint of the people

01:17who were going through this.

01:18And I just want to focus on three quick areas where there's a potential impact.

01:24I mean, one thing you said that was interesting to me,

01:28you're going to ask for additional 20 positions, if I heard you correct, at OMB.

01:33It's a little ironic because you're slashing positions across the government and funding.

01:37But we had the FBI director testify here a few weeks ago,

01:43and he came in and said he has 1,100 vacancies, I think it is, and he needs 1,300 additional.

01:49I think we can all agree that the importance of public safety,

01:52and someone just mentioned fraud, nobody ferrets it out better than the FBI.

01:57Yet the day after he testified here, he testified in the Senate and said,

02:02I don't need those positions after all.

02:04And just one quick point on the fraud piece, I saw an FBI agent who runs the fraud division

02:11testify that between $500 and $700 million every year is stolen from the United States

02:19by our overseas adversaries and that they needed additional resources to track that down.

02:25But apparently you guys aren't going to give that to them.

02:27With respect to national security and the science piece of this, too,

02:33you know, the trauma quote's been read to you, and I heard your comment, you know,

02:36it was taken out of context, and I listened to that speech.

02:39I don't agree.

02:40I think it was consistent with what you were saying that day.

02:43But let's just assume for the moment that what you're saying there is really true.

02:48The bottom line is that the actions that you've taken since then

02:51reiterates the message that you're trying to traumatize these people

02:55and that you want to treat them like villains.

02:57And so what we've got going on right now in the science and tech piece

03:00that's rippling through NASA and other agencies where it's critical for us to have these science

03:06and tech folks, AI, the competition for quantum computing and the like,

03:11they think they're being forced out of these positions.

03:14They're starting to look to go to Europe.

03:15They're starting to look to go back to Korea or India or other places

03:19rather than staying here and doing the work.

03:21And I know from businesses in my district that they need people from overseas

03:26because we're not producing enough of them here in the United States.

03:30Yet we're narrowing the pipeline based on what you're doing with respect to cutting grants to help fund.

03:35We're narrowing the pipeline with respect to the impact you're having on the universities

03:39and science and tech.

03:41We're narrowing the pipeline with respect to the postdocs and other people doing the research

03:45and the government contractors who are doing much of this work too.

03:50So over and over again, we're squeezing that line down.

03:53If you look at the contrast with China, they're doing exactly the opposite.

03:58And they're doing exactly the opposite in the areas where we're in the most competitive areas

04:03and where we really need to win.

04:05We don't want China to get ahead of us militarily.

04:08We don't want China to get ahead of us on quantum computing and AI.

04:11But we're making cuts to NIST, we're making cuts to NASA, we're making cuts to the NIH.

04:17We're making cuts across the board on some of the most important aspects of what we need to do

04:22in the United States to maintain that lead.

04:25And with respect to public health, I see my time's running out here,

04:30and I guess we can do a second round in a minute.

04:32But same kind of thing.

04:34The cuts to NIH.

04:36My father died from Alzheimer's.

04:37I'm a cancer survivor.

04:38You've got to shut down clinical trials in the middle of those going forward.

04:44And it's not like we can just flip a switch and it comes back and starts over again.

04:47Some of those are going to take years to catch back up to where they were.

04:51And some of the people who are conducting the research are leaving the United States

04:55because they don't want to have that happen again.

04:57So I appreciate the goal of going after wage fraud and abuse.

05:00I don't think that that's what you all have really focused on here, your impact certainly,

05:06because we can go through that in the second round.

05:09But you're really undermining our ability to compete and stay ahead of China

05:14on really critical areas like national security and public safety.

05:19Chair, now we're reckoned.

Category

Transcript

Recommended