WASHINGTON – AFSCME President Lee Saunders released the following statement on Russell Vought’s confirmation as Office of Management and Budget director:
“Russell Vought’s singular goal for decades has been to gut public services and hand over as much power and influence to billionaires as possible. His confirmation today signals that everything from Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security to Head Start and veterans’ health care is on the chopping block.
“As the architect of Project 2025, Vought made his vindictive agenda abundantly clear: withhold funding of essential public services, replace federal workers with political loyalists and erase workers’ freedoms. He’s even admitted to wanting to traumatize public service workers – our nurses, school bus drivers, corrections officers and others – and have them viewed as villains. Vought will now control the purse strings to put politics between our communities and the essential services we all need. And he’s already signaled he will disregard Congress and the Constitution to achieve this vision. Let there be no illusions – Vought is an existential threat to the people’s government.
“Right now, we can still fight back by making sure that working people organize like never before to protect our jobs, our freedoms and our communities. It starts with signing a union card, talking to our co-workers, and calling our representatives in Congress to demand they stand with us. We cannot and will not let billionaires undo everything public service workers have committed our lives to.”