Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) accused President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought of being responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of thousands of children.”
The wild allegation came as Democrats erupted over proposed budget cuts during a heated Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Vought appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to defend the Trump administration’s rescissions package, a slate of proposed federal spending reductions submitted to Congress earlier this month.
The package includes cuts to foreign aid programs like USAID and PEPFAR, which Democrats and some Republicans sharply opposed.
The hearing quickly grew tense, with protesters briefly disrupting the proceedings and several senators launching personal attacks on the administration’s fiscal agenda.
“We are talking a quarter million children because of your irresponsible shutdown of programs that Congress had fully authorized,” Merkley said, citing a Boston University study that linked funding reductions to an alleged 246,000 child deaths.
He went further, blaming Vought for acting “in partnership with Elon Musk and the Secretary of State” to unconstitutionally defund aid programs.
“How do you feel about being responsible for hundreds of thousands of children dying?” he demanded.
Vought rejected the charge as political theater, reminding the committee that