OMB Director Russell Vought Highlights 'Truly Appalling' Waste, Defends Trump-Backed Rescissions

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OMB Director Russell Vought defended President Trump's rescissions request before the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Transcript

00:00Thank you. I'm here to testify on the administration's $9.4 billion rescissions package.

00:06This package reflects the Trump administration's steadfast commitment to cutting wasteful federal

00:11spending, antithetical to American interests, and correcting our fiscal trajectory.

00:16Over the past five months, a member of this body and the House of Representatives have

00:20consistently requested that the administration send a rescissions package to codify the work

00:25of Doge into law. The House of Representatives recently passed this package in full, and

00:30it is critical the Senate swiftly do the same. The rescissions package is not a new one, though

00:36it has fallen into disuse over the past two decades. Every president from Gerald Ford through

00:42Bill Clinton successfully rescinded funds. Rescissions were often bipartisan and were once a regular

00:48feature of the budget process. In fact, in the past 42 years, only three presidents have

00:54not proposed rescissions to Congress. Today, I sit before you as the first White House official

00:59to testify on a rescissions package in decades, if not ever, to explain the proposal and demonstrate

01:04the administration's commitment to reigning in federal spending. The package the Senate will

01:10soon consider was carefully crafted with input from Congress to cut funding the American people

01:15find wholly objectionable. The proposal would rescind $1.1 billion in funding to the Corporation

01:21for Public Broadcasting, which has funded a politically biased public media system that has promoted

01:27radical and divisive ideologies at the American taxpayers' expense. Republicans have campaigned on cutting

01:34funding for NPR and PBS for decades, and with good reason. Many members of this body have made the case

01:41eloquently, and the leadership of NPR's own actions and testimony have left no doubt as to their agenda.

01:49There is no longer any excuse for tax dollars to subsidize these radical far-left networks.

01:55If you would like to donate to them on your own, you are more than welcome to do so as a taxpayer,

02:00but taxpayers should no longer be forced to foot the bill. The proposal would also rescind $8.3 billion

02:06in funding for the State Department, USAID, and other foreign aid that has been used to advance

02:12left-wing causes abroad to the detriment of the recipient nations and our own. It is critical that this body,

02:19and the American people writ large, understand that many foreign aid programs use benevolent-sounding

02:25titles to hide truly appalling activity that is not in line with American interests.

02:29For example, under the guise of so-called preventative care within PEPFAR program,

02:36Americans have been funding the following, $5.5 million to LGBTQ advocacy in Uganda,

02:43$800,000 for transgender people, sex workers, and their clients in Nepal, $3.6 for LGBTQ activism,

02:52free training in pastry cooking, psychosocial counseling, a cyber cafe, and the dance-focused groups

03:00for male prostitutes in Haiti, and $1.1 million to produce gender transformation in diverse social

03:07and behavior change report, which advocates, again, quote, gender blindness. Most Americans would be

03:14shocked and appalled to learn that their tax dollars, money they thought was going to medical

03:19care, was actually going to far-left activism, population control, and sex workers. To be clear,

03:25no life-saving treatment will be impacted by this rescissions package. Anyone currently receiving

03:32life-saving treatment will continue to receive that treatment. In fact, over $16 billion worth of

03:38global health funding will remain after the rescission, nearly $10 billion of which is dedicated

03:44to PEPFAR alone. This will take two to three years to spend out, and of course, this is after the U.S.

03:50has provided $120 billion through this program, or over $6 billion each year since its creation. We're now

03:58up to $10 billion per year. At $37 trillion in debt, can we not pull back $400 million? Other examples

04:06of the type of spending proposed for rescissions are almost comically wasteful. For example, complex

04:13crisis funding money went to voter ID in Haiti. Development assistance funding has been used for

04:19net-zero cities in Mexico, electric buses in Rwanda, and critic powder in Madagascar. Global health money

04:28went to the International Planned Parenthood Foundation and UNFPA. IECA funding went to social

04:34media mentorship in Serbia and Belarus. The Clean Technology Fund was used for wind farms in Ukraine.

04:40The list goes on. The American people didn't fund this. They didn't intend to, at least. They didn't

04:47vote to continue the Washington status quo. The entire federal government must be responsible with each

04:52taxpayer dollar that comes to Washington. The American people voted for change. President

04:58Trump stands ready to put our fiscal house back in order and put the American taxpayer first. A vote

05:04for rescissions is a vote to show that the United States Senate is serious about getting our fiscal

05:10house in order. I hope that the Senate will join us in that fight. I look forward to answering your questions.

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