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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Government watchdog Accountable.US warned that President-elect Trump’s pick of his former Office of Budget and Management Director and key Project 2025 architect Russ Vought to again lead the agency confirms suspicions the incoming administration plans to slash Social Security and Medicare to pay for more wasteful tax breaks for price-gouging corporations and billionaires, including a growing number of Trump’s cabinet picks. Accountable.US has previously documented Vought’s nearly 20-year record working on Republican efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare — including overseeing numerous Trump budget proposals to significantly cut Medicare and Social Security over a ten-year period. 

And despite Trump’s dubious claims that Project 2025 holds no influence over him, Vought now marks the sixth right-wing ideologue that authored the unpopular Project 2025 following Accountable.US’ report earlier this week finding at least 5 people behind Project 2025 have been tapped to serve in the Trump Administration.  Vought’s nomination also follows Trump’s pick of self-interested Medicare privatization-advocate Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

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With the architect of Project 2025 nominated to lead Trump's Office of Management and Budget, there can be no distinction between the two. Vought oversaw every budget in the first Trump administration that cut Social Security and Medicare. This much is clear: Social Security and Medicare are at risk in the second Trump presidency."

Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: 

  • From July 2004 to December 2008, Russ Vought worked in numerous senior roles at the Republican Study Committee as the group called for $200 billion in cuts to Medicare over ten years and pushed President Bush to go more extreme with his Social Security privatization scheme and allow even more of peoples’ otherwise guaranteed benefits to be gambled on the stock market.  
  • During his time at Trump’s OMB, Vought helped oversee numerous budget proposals that would have significantly cut Medicare and Social Security over a ten-year period. In 2019, Trump’s 2020 budget proposal called for slashing Medicaid by $1.5 trillion, Medicare by $845 billion, and Social Security by $25 billion over ten years. However, Vought claimed Trump was “keeping his commitment” not to cut entitlement programs. Trump’s 2021 budget proposal again called for slashing Medicare by $451 billion. 

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